BOB2025MIOT
Collection Contents
2 results
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Forgotten Roots of the Nordic Welfare State in Protestant Cultures
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Forgotten Roots of the Nordic Welfare State in Protestant Cultures show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Forgotten Roots of the Nordic Welfare State in Protestant CulturesThe Nordic welfare state of the 20th century has been hailed around the world as a model of how to build democratic and egalitarian societies. It has often been described as a project of social democracy, often following a narrative of secularization and rationalization of society. However, some of the most important actors and ideas of the "Scandinavian Sonderweg" had their roots in Protestant, often Pietist and revivalist milieus that dreamed of creating an egalitarian community. The present volume explores these often forgotten roots in several case studies of phenomena from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, focusing primarily on questioning the function of aesthetics in the creation of the welfare state model. We argue that aesthetics and what Friedrich Schiller called aesthetic education played an important, unifying role for Nordic societies. These aesthetics were shaped by Protestant ideas and practices. Through references to the then widespread circulation of educational texts based on Luther's catechism, the later pietistic catechism of Erik Pontoppidan, Nordic hymnbooks, and practices such as communal singing and preaching in church, church coffee, reading circles, and conventicle meetings, a common aesthetic language emerged that unified different social groups and their competing goals and claims. Civic actors and movements learned specific ways to engage in society, to develop practices of internalizing responsibility, (self)critique, and accountability, and to communicate and develop a more democratic modern civic sphere. We therefore propose to look at this history from the perspective of a historically changing aesthetic as an integrating principle for understanding the political, social, cultural, economic and many other aspects of the Nordic welfare state.
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The Formation of Agricultural Governance
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:The Formation of Agricultural Governance show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: The Formation of Agricultural GovernanceThis book unravels how the agricultural sector and the rural world in Europe became more and more organised within capitalism in the years 1870-1940, and this with the aim of tackling the important challenges of the time. The focus is not so much on the myriad of individual farmers’ actions, but on the collective efforts undertaken through the interplay between the state and the agricultural civil society.
A wide variety of actors, from landowners associations, farmers’ unions, cooperatives, scientific institutions and researchers to farmers themselves (or civil society) played a critical role in the process of drafting a policy agenda, developing agricultural policies and were instrumental in implementing them in close relationship with the state. The result was a metamorphosis from mobilisation and representation of agrarian interests to a form of self-government or co-government of the agricultural sector at the national level, which would only reach its highest point after the Second World War.
These issues are explored by established rural historians, covering a period of seven decades (1870-1940). The papers provide a wide geographical perspective, from the north of Europe to the Mediterranean.
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