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Strindberg's strategies of commitment, disengagement and new commitment across the border between literature and politics represent an intriguing intellectual adventure we can follow throughout his life as a writer. My article focuses on Strindberg's dilemma as it took form in the first half of the 1880s, and observes it through his fundamental and controversial relationship with the Swedish journalist, literary critic and Social-democratic political leader Hjalmar Branting, with the Danish playwright, literary critic, journalist and radical liberal politician Edvard Brandes, and with the Norwegian writer, politically engaged intellectual and nasjonalskald Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. For a period they all experienced, along with Strindberg, the ambivalence of working in a social field where art and politics were intertwined, and were to a certain extent involved in the same project, each with his own interpretation. For Strindberg the writer, defending his autonomy from the political field in the end became crucial. What did his colleagues expect from his work? How did Strindberg react to their expectations? What is his legacy today with respect to stances such as intellectual autonomy from power, democratic rule, pacifism and critique of civilization, but also anti-feminism and anti-Semitism? Strindberg's unruly genius illustrates that it is at times difficult to draw the dividing line between radicalism and reaction, and that the great modernists were often also great anti-modernists.

This dissertation studies power and the production of the democratic subject in the context of democratic debate. It is important to understand the role of power in democratic debate. Even more important is to understand how power underpins the construction of the democratic subject in this context. Is it possible for just anybody to be a convincing democratic subject? Or does democratic debate assume a particular kind of body – a democratic "super-body"? This thesis argues that in order to answer such questions it is not sufficient to study the intellectual and verbal aspects of democratic debate. The situation needs to be examined in its material enactment. Since previous research does not offer a coherent way of analysing how power underpins the material construction of the democratic subject, this dissertation develops such an analytical perspective, which it terms a feminist theatrical perspective. The perspective is "theatrical" because it studies democratic debate as intra-active enactment, which assumes stage, costume and stage direction. The perspective is inspired by Foucault and Butler as well as by feminist performance, architectural and design research. The feminist theatrical perspective, and the methodological framework that it offers, constitutes the main contribution of the thesis. The dissertation focuses on democratic debate in the specific form of the parliamentary debate. It identifies three key parliamentary ideals about democratic debate that are materially enacted as "dramas" during the debate: the idea that democratic debate is built on equality, that it is important as representing the people, and that it is importantly rendered in combative struggle. Empirically, the thesis is based on an ethnographic field-study of the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, conducted in 2008/2009, and an in-depth study of two debates between party leaders that took place in the Riksdag in 2010. The main finding is that power is necessarily ambivalent in the production of the democratic subject in this context. The thesis identifies frameworks for how the democratic subject should move, behave, sound and look. However, these frameworks are contradictory. No actual physical body could, as a "super-body", fully correspond to the physical characteristics that are assumed about the democratic subject.

Gunnar Myrdal offers a pragmatic extension of the Weber-Rickert solution to the value-incommensurability problem in post-Enlightenment. The notion of Myrdal as a more radical Weberian than Weber himself calls for further investigation of "Science, Values, and Politics in Gunnar Myrdal's methodology". Myrdal recurrently confirms his deep allegiance to Axel Hagerstrom's radical anti-metaphysics, but actually denies Weberian influences on his way to apply explicit value premises as a vehicle to avoid uncontrolled value intrusion in policy analyses, despite obvious affinities. A public intellectual can hardly avoid to "beat the drum" for some values, which cannot satisfy any criteria of truth. The use of significant social movements as norm-senders provides a problematic way out of the problem of value-polytheism in the post-Enlightenment era and the necessity and anxiety of choice in late Modernity, even if it remains unresolved philosophically. This is the solution Myrdal applies. Weber's and Myrdal's common project is the rationalization of value hierarchies for instrumental policy analyses. Myrdal goes one step further, "operationalizing" a solution to the norm-sender problem, for intersubjective means-end-analyses. An American Dilemma is an exemplary work, with its list of explicit postulated premises. Adapted from the source document.

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.

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 thesis examines the question of organization, governance and choice of seeds in Swedish agriculture. It consists of four papers: Paper I investigates the evolution of plant breeding industry in Sweden. The results suggest that the establishment of intellectual property rights (IPRs) schemes creates power in the seed value chain in Sweden and has therefore been a major driver of mergers and acquisitions, together with changes in domestic agricultural policy as well the country´s entrance to EU. Based on nationwide survey among farmers, papers II and III examine the impact of IPRs and specifically the implications of the enforcement of Plant Breeders Rights on farmers´ choice between certified versus farm saved seed (FSS). Paper II uses transaction cost theory and logistics regression to examine empirically the governance structure of farmers choosing certified or FSS. Farmers´ assessment of the quality seed in terms of the genetic purity of each channel has no impact on their choice while personal relations with their upstream partners, investments in the farm as well as delivery contracts affect their procurement strategy. In paper III, spatial autoregressive models are used in order to analyze the transfer of "know-how" between farmers, and the spillover effects of social learning in farmers´ choice of seed channel. Farmers are distinguished between neighbors, based on their relative distance; and peers, based on membership in farmers' cooperatives. The results indicate the existence of spatial dependence on Swedish farmers' choice of seed channel. Paper IV evaluates the impact of farmers' social networks on their decision to be involved in the governance of the agricultural cooperative. The findings suggest a relationship between network characteristics and farmers' involvement in the governance that persists over a long period.

This thesis studies political elites' beliefs about the ideal party leader. This ideal, like other human ideals, is characterized by ambivalence. The thesis explores the ambivalence expressed in party elites' leadership ideal and how it can be understood. The study draws primarily on qualitative interviews with members of the party elites in the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party in Sweden. Specifically, it analyzes the "life world" of the party leaders, party secretaries, group leaders in the Swedish Parliament, and election committee chairmen. Building on classical and modern research on leadership and political parties, the thesis derives an analytical tool to guide the interviews which covers six aspects of party leadership: Characteristics, Leadership style, Tasks, Freedom of action, Representation, and Status. The empirical analysis shows that the elites' party leadership ideal is ambivalent and different across the two parties. The ambiguities can be summarized as dichotomies, where the ideal leader should encompass both sides of the dichotomy. The Social Democratic Party elites' ideal is represented by two dichotomies: the leader versus the team and the party versus the government. To bridge the ambiguities, the elite resort to the idea of "anchoring". This notion resolves conflicts between the leader and the surrounding team and the party and the government. The ideal of the Liberal Party's elites includes four dichotomies: dogmatism versus pragmatism; idea versus person; appearance (outward-looking) versus action (inward-looking); and free versus constrained. Unlike the case of the Social Democratic Party, it is less evident how the Liberal Party's elites accommodate the ambiguities. However, an emphasis on accountability and maintaining a balance between existing conflicts, partially remedies the dilemma. Also, the idea of leadership within the Liberal Party is less problematic compared to the Social Democratic Party. In sum, while the Social Democrats' ideal resembles the "friendly father figure", the Liberals' ideal is portrayed by the "superficial intellectual". The findings also indicate that the way in which the parties were established, their experience of being in government, size, ideology, and position within the party system affect their beliefs about leadership ideals.