The Impact and Organization of the Humanities in Sweden, 1850-2020. This book addresses the shifting status of the humanities through a national case study spanning two centuries. The societal function of the humanities is considered from the flexible perspective of knowledge politics in order to historicize notions of impact and intellectual organization that tend to be taken for granted. The focus on modern Sweden enables an extended but still empirically coherent historical analysis, inviting critical comparisons with the growing literature on the history of the humanities from around the world. In the Swedish case, the humanities were instrumental to the construction of modern societal institutions, political movements, and professional education in the second half of the 19th century, while in the 20th century, the sense of future-making shifted towards science and medicine, and later technology and economy. The very rationale of the humanities was thus put under pressure as their social contract required novel negotiations. Their state and connections to society were nevertheless of a complex and ambiguous character, as is demonstrated by this volume whose contributions explore the many faces and places of the modern humanities.
Author(s): Anders Ekström, Hampus Östh Gustafsson
Series: Studies In The History Of Knowledge
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 294
City: Amsterdam
Tags: Contemporary History; Cultural Studies; Interdisciplinary Studies; Modern History; Philosophy
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction
Politics of Knowledge and the Modern History of the Humanities
Anders Ekström and Hampus Östh Gustafsson
Emerging Disciplinary Divides
2 Measuring Up to the Humanities
Navigating the Epistemological Advantage of Classical Humanism in Nineteenth-Century Scholarly Periodicals
Isak Hammar
3 Into the Present
On the Modern Historicity of the Philologist Bible
Martin Jansson
4 Pedagogy and the Humanities
Changing Boundaries in the Academic Map of Knowledge, 1860s–1960s
Joakim Landahl and Anna Larsson
5 Contested Classicism
Reconciling Classical Studies in Twentieth-Century Sweden
Johannes Siapkas
Places of the Humanities in the Postwar World
6 Gadfly or Guide of Souls?
The Challenge of Democracy to the Twentieth-Century Humanities
Hampus Östh Gustafsson
7 Public Arenas of the Humanities
The Circulation of Knowledge in the Postwar Period
Johan Östling, Anton Jansson and Ragni Svensson
8 The Place of Humanities in a World of Science
Nobel Symposium 14 and the Vanishing Humanist
Sven Widmalm
Impact, Policy, and Humanities Futures
9 Thinking the Human System
The Application of Humanities and Social Science Reasoning to Societal Problems
Jenny Andersson and David Larsson Heidenblad
10 Borderline Humanities
Culture, History, Language, and Beliefs in Swedish Defense Research
Fredrik Bertilsson
11 “Humanities 2000”
Legitimizing Discourses of the Humanities in Public Debate and Research Policy at the Turn of the Century
Anna Tunlid
12 Forging the Integrative Humanities
Policies and Prospects
Anders Ekström
Index of names
