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Samvetet, skrev 1500-talsförfattaren Michel de Montaigne, har en fantastisk kraft! Det kan få oss att anklaga och strida mot oss själva - och det ser oss när ingen annan gör det. Men det kan också göra oss starka. I samma anda har författare och tänkare som Shakespeare, Luther, Hegel, de Gouges och många andra lyft fram samvetet: det ger upphov till inre konflikter och är samtidigt en kompass som vi inte kan vara utan. Men samvetet är inget vi hyllar idag. Istället söker vi harmoni och inre frid. Det är åtminstone vad den stora självhjälpsindustrin lär ut åt oss. Och det går utmärkt väl ihop med en tidsanda som tycks allt mer brutal och samvetslös; i olika medier, i politiken och ekonomin. Det gäller att vara tvärsäker, enhetlig och övertygad, inte ha "second thoughts". Samvetet verkar på många sätt hopplöst förlegat. Så hur mår det idag? Har det förlorat sin kraft? Det är den fråga Cecilia Sjöholm ställer i den här boken. Genom att söka efter samvetets plats i filosofin och konsten genom historien hamnar hon här och nu. Finns samvetet i oss själva som individer, i den samhälleliga gemenskapen, eller någonstans mitt emellan?

This study investigates the pictorial world of the medieval Vadstena Abbey church. The interior of the church was filled with altars and images that had the three separated groups of viewers in mind: the 60 nuns, the 25 conventual brothers and the numerous pilgrims coming to visit the shrine of Saint Birgitta. The pilgrims faced a pictorial message where the role of saint Birgitta was emphasized, but still one among all the other saints. The images directed to the nuns and the brothers accentuated the role of the Virgin Mary as the exemplarily follower of Christ. Furthermore, all the church interior was furnished to enhance the position of the nuns, i.e. that this monastic foundation was made primarily for women.

There is a strong narrative on how the humanities were marginalized in postwar Sweden: in the land of engineers, technocrats and social scientists, there was no room for erudition, philosophy and history. This book challenges such a notion and shows how clearly the humanities were present in the public sphere of the time. By applying perspectives from the history of knowledge, the authors illustrate how humanists were key figures in the welfare society's culture and politics, media and book market, education and intellectual debate.
At the heart of the book is the public sphere of the 1960s and 1970s. In a first part, the authors highlight how humanists played a decisive role in the young television's educational program as well as in the popular science paperback publishing of the time and on the essay pages in the newspapers. In a second part, attention is drawn to the humanities' place in the Christian cultural sphere, the labour movement's education work and the New Left's book cafés. We meet people like Per I. Gedin, Gunnel Vallquist and Jan-Öjvind Swahn, but also TV producers, study circle organizers, translators of radical non-fiction and many others. They all helped to set humanistic knowledge in motion during the postwar decades.
Against an international background, the image of a humanistic knowledge system with deep roots and wide connections in Swedish society emerges. It is about these actors and arenas of knowledge that this book is about.

This anthology is a conclusion of the research results from a four-year VR project called Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland - a holistic study of a World Heritage (2014–2017). Decorative painted interiors and furniture as well as patterned interior textiles during 1700–1870 have been investigated with a combination of methods from both the humanities and the natural sciences. The purpose has been to obtain new and in-depth knowledge of paint, dyes and other raw materials and techniques used in the manufacture of artefacts and interiors in the farmhouses in this region. Through the study, an increased understanding of the local availability of paint material and the trade at that time has been obtained. In addition, detailed knowledge of the originators of the interiors has been generated. The project thus adds new knowledge for further investigation of cultural, social and economic contexts and conditions for the interior design culture that emerged and was formed in Hälsingland farms during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The future woman – what would she be like? And what would be her place in society? These questions were explored through stories about girls' upbringing and education in nineteenth and early twentieth century literature for girls. About the time of the breakthrough of women novelists in the 1830s, books for girls started to be published. They depict everyday games and exhilarating adventures, student life and vocational dreams. By addressing girls directly, these books aimed at both discussing and influencing future female citizens. In Future Women, Maria Andersson shows how Swedish literature for girls and its depiction of young women was a part of the nineteenth century debate on women's civil and political rights. The genre gathered authors of different political convictions but they were all united by the fact that young women became the focal point of contemporary social changes in their works. Housewifely girls, manly women students and shopping coquettes illustrated different paths to adulthood and modern life. In the girl book genre, the young woman was simultaneously a vehicle of nostalgic memories from a lost world and the promise of a more equal, peaceful future.

In recent years, ideas of conscience and the liberty of conscience have become ever more salient in public discourse. Historically, these concepts have been used to mark out a certain scope of freedom and protection in moral, political and legal conflicts. In our time, individual conscience is frequently used to legitimate objections to, for instance, military service and medical interventions like abortion and vaccination. So too in Sweden – a country widely described as one of the most modern and secularized societies in the world. In this volume, a group of researchers in history, human rights, law, ethics and sociology of religion address some of the most central issues around conscience and the liberty of conscience in Sweden from the middle ages to the present. By situating conscience and liberty in wider intellectual, social and political settings, the essays provide alternative ways of thinking about the most intractable problems surrounding these concepts – the relationship between law and morality, the tension between individual and collective freedom, as well as the role of religion in public affairs. This volume will create new avenues of research for scholars and students interested in challenges related to conscience and liberty: both those in ethics, politics and law seeking a historical perspective, and those in history who want to tie their studies to the present.

Today's mathematics education has an impact even outside the confines of the classroom, not least through the relevance of mathematics in culture, economics, politics and in relation to power. Sociopolitical perspectives in mathematics didactic research provide insights into how education in mathematics is social and political. Research based on these perspectives suggests both critical questioning and not-yet-imagined possibilities for content, teaching, policy and further research. This book introduces, for a larger Swedish audience, the research orientations and strategies that sociopolitical perspectives have to offer. In the book, this is illustrated in several ways. The chapters describe current research on the socio-political challenges of mathematics education in several different contexts, e.g. classrooms, after-school programs, curricula, mathematics teacher education and even mathematics education research. In this way, perspectives are broadened to groups of people, institutions and forces, which constitute a network of mathematics education practice. The chapters present different philosophical and empirical studies, based on theoretical tools from philosophy, social science and cultural studies, critical studies of education and socio-cultural-political studies of mathematics education. Methodological and analytical strategies such as text and discourse analysis and case studies of practice are used. In this way, opportunities to research mathematics education based on socio-political perspectives are illustrated. The chapters use various writing styles which invite the reader into the world of research. Thus, the reader will encounter different ways of thinking about the role of mathematics education in the creation of modern Swedish society.

"To analyze the emergence of a professional field means to understand the social processes that take place in the formation of professions in society such as. knowledge, power and social order. Why does the medical profession have such a high status? How come some professions have power over others? What does medical science contribute to professional knowledge? These are some of the questions that this book seeks to answer through a professional sociological analysis.
The book is about the growth and professionalization of the Swedish medical field from the Middle Ages to the 1990s, with a focus on three of its professions that have been active there, namely doctors, nurses and biomedical analysts (former laboratory assistants). Books about professions often focus on a profession or an important institution, but there is no book that describes the larger social professional medical field over time.
By becoming aware of the field-specific change and development processes and their inertia, one understands that change is very slow and that there are many parameters that must work in the same direction for a real change to take place and be noticed. Other important insights are that the professions themselves are not so strong and dynamic, but that they are dependent on opportunities being opened and closed by external forces, in many cases without their intervention. The book sheds light on how to understand the world around you in a new way, with a critical holistic perspective and with terminology that can help to put into words what is experienced."

In this volume of studies, Animal: Moments of Affect, Moments of Pain, eight ethnologists apply a cultural perspective to people's varied and complex relationships with other species. The contributions focus on wild animals, that is, those that are rarely found in the authors' immediate vicinity. Based on ongoing research, the articles discuss themes such as conflicts and joys in the birdwatching world, charismatic animals in various exhibition contexts, children's fears, morbid animal jokes and the ritual transformation of living animals into edible meat. The texts range from the tender, comical and cute to death and existential vulnerability. The book begins with the editors presenting an overview of how animals have been produced, noticed and studied in a mostly Nordic humanistic research context. Then the articles follow. Based on the idea of affective logic, Elin Lundquist follows the on-site monitoring of the bird hunting that takes place annually in Malta. Mattias Frihammar uses observations at a wilderness gallery with taxidermied animals to reflect on local identity. Lars Kaijser examines the ambivalent and conflicted portrayal of sharks in public aquariums. Sverker Hyltén-Cavallius writes about the death of extinct animals and how this is displayed in natural history museums. Susanne Nylund Skog examines birdwatchers' stories as an expression of collecting and as a way of manifesting status. With lobster cartoons as a starting point, Simon Ekström shows how these depict both animal rights issues and human anxiety. Helena Hörnfeldt investigates animal fear and the diffuse boundary between humans and animals. Proceeding from different depictions of slaughter and the preparation of meat, Michelle Zethson problematizes how some animals are made edible. The volume ends with an epilogue by the editors commenting on the findings.

Preliminary Material /Jonas Grimheden and Rolf Ring -- Group Accommodation and the Challenges of Education: Multicultural or Intercultural or a Combination of the Two? /Asbjørn Eide -- The Importance of an Education in Human Rights /M. Arthur Diakité -- The Education of Police in Human Rights a Framework for Human Rights Programmes Forpolice /Ralph Crawshaw -- Human Rights Education in China /LI Baodong -- Human Rights Education and Research in China: the Contribution of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute /Sun Shiyan -- Human Rights Education in the Netherlands /Cees Flinterman and Stacey Nitchov -- The Protection of Civilian Educational Institutions During the Active Hostilities of International Armed Conflict in International Humanitarian Law /David a. G. Lewis -- The Self-reflective Human Rights Promoter /Jonas Grimheden -- Hugo Grotius and the Roots of Human Rights Law /Ove Bring -- Human Rights before International Criminal Courts /Vojin Dimitrijevic and Marko Milanovic -- Never Again? Rwanda and the World /Lennart Aspegren -- The Contested Notion of Freedom of Opinion /Herdís Thorgeirsdóttir -- From Protective Passports to Protected Entry Procedures? the Legacy of Raoul Wallenberg in the Contemporary Asylum Debate /Gregor Noll -- Implementing International Human Rights Law on Behalf of Asylum Seekers and Refugees: the Record of the Nordic Countries /Robin Lööf and Brian Gorlick -- The Legal Position of Asylum-seekers in Austria /Lauri Hannikainen -- Refugees in Swedish Private International Law /Michael Bogdan -- Civil Freedoms and Rights in the Swedish Constitution of 1974: the Process and the Rationale /Carl-Gustaf Andrén -- Various Interpretations of Human Rights for Women Challenges at United Nations Conferences /Elisabeth Gerle -- Implementation of International Conventions as a Socio­Legal Enterprise: Examples from the Convention on the Rights of the Child /Håkan Hydén -- List of Contributors /Jonas Grimheden and Rolf Ring.

"What were the ideas about conflicts and conflict resolutions in the Nordic countries during the Vendel Period and the Viking Age? What role did i.e. gender and power hierarchies play in the conflicts? All of the contributing texts are, in one way or another, related to the theme 'war and peace'. They present new interpretations of some of the Old Scandinavian texts as well as of archaeological material: the runic inscription on the Eggja stone (Andreas Nordberg), texts about the fight between the god Thor and the giant Hrungnir (Tommy Kuusela), about the valkyries (Britt-Mari Näsström), about a phalos cult (Maths Bertell), about fylgjur, a type of beings regarded as related to the fate of a person (Eldar Heide), about enclosed areas for fights and battles (Torsten Blomkvist), about the defilement of sacred areas and places as a power strategy (Olof Sundqvist), about ritualisations of peace negotiations (Stefan Olsson), and about Ragnarök, the end and renewing of the world (Anders Hultgård).
The book has been edited by Hakan Rydving and Stefan Olsson, both from the The Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (AHKR) at the University of Bergen.
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This book is published in Swedish:
Vilka idéer om konflikter och konfliktlösningar hade man i Norden under vendel- och vikingatid (från ca 550 till ca 1100)? Hur uppfattades gudar som Oden och Tor och andra väsen som valkyrior och fylgjor kunna påverka krig och fred? Hur reglerades användningen av våld och hur utformades fredsprocesser? Vilken roll spelade kön och makthierarkier i konflikterna? Hur förhåller sig de förkristna skandinaviska föreställningarna om den sista striden till motsvarande kristna och forniranska traditioner? Det är några av de frågor som bidragen i den här boken diskuterar. Undersökningarna baseras i huvudsak på texter från den aktuella perioden och från tidig medeltid, men också på arkeologiskt material. De ger intressanta exempel på hur källorna till vendel- och vikingatida traditioner kan analyseras om man tar utgångspunkt i frågor om krig och fred.
Boken har redigerats av Håkan Rydving och Stefan Olsson, båda verksamma vid Institutt for arkeologi, historie, kultur- og religionsvitskap (AHKR) vid Universitetet i Bergen."