Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

Fattigdomen i 1800-talets Sverige yttrade sig inte enbart i form av låga inkomster, utan även i vad Amartya Sen har kallat ”förlust av förmåga”. En bostad med brister i form av trångboddhet, avsaknad av värme och ljus, har inte bara konsekvenser för välfärd och hälsa, utan också på sociala möjligheter att leva ett gott liv och hur man betraktas av andra i ett samhälle. Att bo under de allra fattigaste omständigheterna i jordkulor och kojor innebar stora umbäranden och förlust av förmågor i form av erbarmliga bostadsförhållanden, usla sanitära förhållanden, dålig hälsa, allvarliga sjukdomar och hur fattiga betraktades av andra.

From the mid-1800s to the First World War, Sweden transitioned from being a predominantly agrarian country to an industrial nation and living standards increased rapidly. However, poverty among the agricultural underclasses remained severe well into the twentieth century, evident in the poor housing, inadequate eldercare, and poor health. In this essay I examine poverty as expressed in poor living conditions in earth huts and shacks – examples of poor housing – in the Swedish countryside in the nineteenth century.

Behind high levels of material welfare, there can also be significant restrictions on people’s freedoms, curtailing their human rights, political freedoms, access to healthcare and education, eldercare, housing, and so on. Amartya Sen calls these restrictions ‘capability deprivation’ and a way to define poverty and identify the poor. The factors beyond low income that drive loss of capability include age, gender, class, illness, economic resources, disabilities, social roles and positions, and other conditions over which an individual has limited or no control. In other words, poverty is not only expressed in material life because of economic conditions; in the form of a loss of basic capabilities, poverty can also mean shameful social relationships with the individual’s community. However, housing cannot be reduced to the quality of the dwelling alone, because it has implications for a person’s well-being, self-esteem, and status in society. An overcrowded, drafty home with a leaky roof and no heating, ventilation, or natural light not only affects the individual’s well-being and health, but also their social opportunities to live a good life and how they are perceived by others.

The official reports by Sweden’s provincial doctors provide an insight into the capability deprivation that poverty entailed for those living in poor housing. There were recurring descriptions of overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, poor health and disease, wretched housing standards with cold rooms, signs of uncleanliness and untidiness, poor lighting, low ceilings, and floors made of earth, stone slabs, or boards. These descriptions complement information from memory records, interviews, and photographs, where the condition and state of rural dwellings are particularly evident.

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.