Carl Marklund

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Researcher at Södertörn University

This timely edited volume gather’s a number of Sweden’s leading historians who specialize on the profound transformations of the late 20th Century. Each chapter starts from an image, and at the center is the “market turn” – a multifaceted, but at the same time distinct historical process through which the market as an institution, an ideal, and a m...

Swedish financier, philanthropist, and progressive Olof Aschberg played a dynamic, but “forgotten” role in the contacts between international labor, Western finance, and Soviet power across the world wars. We first suggest Aschberg can be studied as a converter of different forms of capital as well as a trader in trust in between the practices of d...

This article examines the intertwined circulation of multiple kinds of Nordic models. We seek to understand how modelization of the region occurred at multiple levels and in disparate fields, in other words how different aspects of Nordic policies and politics came to be understood as worthy of interest and at times of emulation. In doing so, we ai...

In intellectual histories of geography as well as in international relations, geopolitics is usually the business of great powers, understood as the expansion of hard power through territorial control. However, the existence of a ‘ Geopolitik of the weak’ has also been theorised, premised on the ability of smaller states – such as the Nordic countr...

‘Nordic Nineties’: Norwegian and Swedish self-understanding in the face of globalization

Globalization, stagflation and economic uncertainty challenged the Swedish welfare model during the 1980s, driving renegotiations of state-market relations domestically as well as re-conceptualizations of Sweden’s place in the world internationally. This article addresses how a key media event – the 1638–1988 New Sweden 350th Anniversary of the New...

Scandinavian countries are routinely considered exceptional for their commitment to development cooperation, peace mediation, and humanitarian action. This book highlights how the political culture of Scandinavia is indeed characterized by the idea of doing good on the world stage, but then shows how this 'Scandinavian humanitarian brand' is an ass...

As North–South conflict appeared to overshadow Cold War tensions in the early 1970s, minor powers as well as non-aligned states across the world faced new challenges. The oil crisis, the rise of environmentalism, and the calls for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) propelled a wide-ranging debate within the Nordic countries regarding their c...

This paper analyses the contemporary deployment of the Nordic welfare state model as a centrepiece of Nordic competitive identity and strategic communication on the global market of ideas. First, it looks at the interrelated phenomena of global competition, competitive identity and region branding. Second, it studies the interplay between Nordic tr...

This article analyzes Swedish political scientist and conservative politician Rudolf Kjellén’s advocacy in favour of a Swedish “Baltic program” directed at the Baltic Sea region and Russia in the decades preceding the First World War. These Baltic ambitions as well as their legacy in the interwar period are studied as a series of exercises in “para...

The 'open society' has become a watchword of liberal democracy and the market system in the modern globalized world. Openness stands for individual opportunity and collective reason, as well as bottom-up empower-ment and top-down transparency. It has become a cherished value, despite its vagueness and the connotation of vulnerability that surrounds...

Planning—in the sense of purposive action geared towards the anticipated future—has usually been seen by anthropologists and social psychologists as a characteristic of universal human reason. As a specific socio-political practice and scientific theory, however, historians and social theorists have often identified planning as a specific trait of...

Today, it is widely assumed that a power shift has taken place over the past few decades – a shift away from politics and in favor of the market. According to this view, neo-liberalism has since the 1970s and onwards reduced the scope of “the political”, limiting the exercise of public power in general and planning in particular. Despite this ass...

This paper looks at how Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén (1864-1922) conceived of the relationship between nature and culture, between material and immaterial power as well as the role of soft power, geopolitical imaginary and competitive identity in off-setting potentially unfavourable geopolitical conditions for small and medium-sized s...

In this article, we study the relationship between the United States of America and Norden, first showing how images of the Nordic model were constructed and reproduced in the United States from the 1920s until the 1960s. We find both utopias and dystopias in these narratives. Second, the article argues that these American images, narratives, and s...

This article analyses the background, activities and reception of the Swedish power investigation (1985–1990). It argues that the power investigation had to navigate between two distinct expectations: on the one hand, the investigation was to expose private power in the interest of equality and justice; on the other hand, it was to improve the exer...

Looming crisis, public discontent with privatization, and widening inequalities are factors which have historically set the electorate in favour of social democratic welfare policies. Today, however, these concerns rather appear to support new right-wing populist countermovements, even in the traditionally progressive Nordic countries. This article...

This article takes a closer look at how interwar supporters of modernism sought to overcome the opposition they had to face. It does so by looking at the usage of history and Swedishness at the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 and contrasting this experience with a brief excursus on the image of progress and Americanism as presented at the A Century of...

Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts gerieten die modernen Industriegesellschaften in eine tiefe Krise. Die Welt wurde vieldeutig, die sozialen Beziehungen schienen sich aufzulösen. Social Engineering war eine Möglichkeit, die negativen Folgen der »ambivalenten Moderne« zu überwinden. Durch die systematische Umgestaltung der Lebenswelt und der Alltagspra...

While Sweden was first proposed as a 'social laboratory' due to its unique homogeneity in the 1920s, it only evolved into a positive example for others with its framing as a 'middle way' between totalitarianism and capitalism during the 1930s. While some questioned whether this Swedish balancing act could be exported, others saw the middle way less...

The longstanding association of the “North” with “rationality” on the one hand and “Sweden” with “sex” on the other fulfilled a particular role in the philosophical geography of the radical 1960s and 1970s. By looking at works by Susan Sontag and Roland Huntford, this article proposes that Sweden could aid both radicals and conservatives in making...

In this dissertation I have tried to map how the concept of "social engineering" has been used from its inception in the early 1890s to the beginning of its decline in the late 1940s. The study concentrates upon the 1930s. In particular, I have asked who used this concept, in what contexts, and against which adversaries. I have taken most of my mat...