Historielöshet

Exempel från svensk klassanalys förr och nu

Abstract

Lack of history – examples from old and current Swedish discourses on class

This is an exploratory study of discourses on class relations in Sweden from 1840s to late 1970s that rises the issue of social amnesia and presentism in academic research. A basic assumption is that acknowledging previous efforts to enable contextualization of successive analytical contributions is of paramount importance in order to avoid presentism. Three periods are discussed; 1) Pre-Marxist debate on poverty and the social issue in the 1840s; 2) Pontus Fahlbeck’s political science and polemical studies around the turn of the century, which were based on a functional theory of inequality; 3) Torgny Segerstedt’s industrial sociology that was part of establishing modern Swedish sociology as well as continuing in Fahlbeck’s vein and picking up North American functionalism. The result indicates a disappointing picture. Preceding approaches were often unknown, forgotten or ignored. A myopic and eternal present seems to have prevailed during the period 1840s – late 1970s.