Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

Vem bör sköta landets vägar? Det vi idag ser som en självklarhet – att staten ansvarar för vägnätet – är i själva verket en ovanlig lösning.

Från medeltiden fram till 1920-talet sköttes vägunderhållet på den svenska landsbygden av fastighetsägarna. Det utgjorde en del av deras skattebörda. I ett internationellt perspektiv var det en okonventionell modell: ett system som var extremt decentraliserat och ansvaret delades av hundratusentals personer.

Men vägar som inte underhålls förfaller snabbt och vägunderhållet i början av 1900-talet utpekades under lång tid som den svenska vägadministrationens akilleshäl. År 1944 övertog därför staten ansvaret för samtliga allmänna vägar, och även det är sällsynt internationellt sett. Dessförinnan hade det kommunala självstyret prioriterats framför försöken att förbättra vägarnas kvalitet generellt.

I Välfärdens vägar granskar historikern Erik Lindberg hur svårt det var att reformera underhållssystemet till följd av ett långtgående individuellt och lokalt självbestämmande. Många förändringar kunde blockeras av enskilda individer eller lokalsamhällena. Förstatligandet av vägnätet 1944 var ett drastiskt mått för att helt frikoppla vägarnas underhåll från lokala intressen.

"Spanish" lemons for sale: Women's agency on the fruit market in eighteenth-century Stockholm

Several historical studies have assumed that increased economic opportunities for some women were beneficial to all women. An investigation of the trade in lemons in eighteenth-century Stockholm qualifies that conclusion. Lemons were expensive luxury goods but despite this there were some female street vendors who were active as wholesale lemon traders. The street sellers' permits were supposed to be issued to poor deserving women to provide them with the means to support themselves, not to wholesale traders. Some women even delivered large quantities of lemons to the Swedish Royal Court. This finding qualifies the view that women in early modern Europe were delegated to economic niches on the margin. Agency on the lemon market did not undermine the male dominated guild economy as is sometimes assumed. On the contrary, the female lemon traders acted in ways similar to the male traders who were guild members. Female lemon traders used the same kind of formal channels, such as the local court, to petition and protect their trading rights and limit competition from others. Furthermore, they acted independently from their household position and did not cooperate with their spouses, something that seems to have been common also on the Dutch fruit market during the same period. The female lemon traders acted collectively within temporary networks and petitioned in order to protect their own rights and to circumscribe other street vending women's rights. Women's agency as expressed in this study reinforced an economic order based on special interests and guilds.

This article discusses the so-called verb-oriented method and its role in the research project Gender and Work in early modern Sweden (GaW), which is based at Uppsala University. It provides a presentation of the GaW-database, which has been designed to allow analysis according to the verb-method. Finally, the article points out that this method can be combined with a number of different theoretical approaches as long as the focus is on practices. It is therefore compatible with the approaches of e.g., Judith Butler, Michel de Certeau, and Amartya Sen. Work is defined as "time-use with the purpose of making a living" and the article discusses why data on time-use, or actual work activities, are better suited for research into early modern Swedish working life than other types of data. It shows that activities are usually described in the sources by verb-phrases, and explains how and from what sources verb-phrases are collected and analyzed within the project. In order to allow for generalizations the verb-method presupposes large amounts of data. This is the rationale for the GaW-database, which at present includes around 5000 verb-phrases and 75000 data posts.