Mid Sweden University

In preindustrial Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries iron was made by a variety of techniques and in the most diverse of social settings. At the risk of over-simplifying, direct reduction techniques were dominant in southern Europe. Coal technology made iron available in abundance. Pig iron output soared towards the end of the eighteenth century, from 61,000 tons in 1785 to 120,000 tons in 1795, then to 250,000 tons in 1805. By 1850 pig iron production in the United Kingdom stood at 2.25 million tons. The growth of bar iron output was every bit as spectacular. Seemingly limitless mineral energy and a profusion of cheap iron allowed Britain to play its pioneering role in the industrialisation of the globe. Hyde became the new orthodoxy about technological change in the iron industry, but did so at a time when the international debate over proto-industrialization theory steered scholarly interest away from questions of technology. 

The essays in this volume, each written by an acknowledged expert in the field, trace the fortunes of British coal technology as it spread across the European continent, from Sweden and Russia to the Alps and Spain, and supply an authoritative picture of industrial transformation in one of the key industries of the 19th century. In this period iron making in continental Europe was transformed by the take-up of technologies such as coke smelting and iron puddling that had already revolutionised the British iron industry. The transfer of British technologies was fundamental to European industrialisation, but that transfer was not straightforward. The techniques that had proved so successful in Britain had to be adapted to local circumstances elsewhere, for charcoal-fired techniques proved surprisingly durable. More often than not, as these studies show, coal-fired methods were incorporated into traditional production systems, making for the proliferation of technological hybrids. Overall, it is diversity that stands out. Some European regions (southern Belgium) came near to the British model; others (Spain) persisted with charcoal technology into the late 19th century. Some countries (Sweden) adopted British organisational principles but not the reliance on coal; others (Russia) maintained different iron making sectors - one coal-based, the other loyal to charcoal - in parallel. © Chris Evans and Göran Rydén 2005.

We examine trends in innovation output for two highly ranked innovative countries: Finland and Sweden (1970–2013). Our novel dataset, collected using the LBIO (literature-based innovation output) method, suggests that the innovation trends are positive for both countries, despite an extended downturn in the 1980s. The findings cast some doubt on the proposition that the current stagnation of many developed countries is due to a lack of innovation and investment opportunities. Our data show that Finland catches up to, and passes, Sweden in innovation output in the 1990s. In per capita terms, Finland stays ahead throughout the period. We find that the strong Finnish performance is largely driven by innovation increase in just a handfull of sectors, but is not restricted to few companies. Both countries saw a rise in innovation during the dot-com era and the structural changes that followed. Since 2000 however, Sweden has outperformed Finland in terms of total innovations, especially in machinery and ICT, while the Finnish rate of innovation has stabilised. We suggest that these patterns may be explained by different paths of industrial renewal.

The increased meat consumption during the past 15 years has boosted a dramatic production increase called the Livestock Revolution. This case study from Rio Grande do Sul indicates that the Livestock Revolution causes prosperity for large-scale food processing companies, while small-scale farmers are being marginalized. Utilizing the food regime analysis, this polarizing pattern is interpreted as an expression of the 'corporate food regime,' which is challenged by an alternative agri-food paradigm. As farmer resistance constitutes alternatives that fuel the dynamics of the Livestock Revolution, it is argued that these tensions reflect an ongoing crisis of the contemporary food regime.

This dissertation explores the story of Brazil’s Landless Movement: its historiographical prequel, its narrative components, its modifications, its enactment. The study derives from a non-essentialist understanding of the resistance agent, here construed as political subject – a collective of individuals, contingently unified in a specific political struggle, not necessarily representing a mutual material need, nor a common identity. From the premise of political subject contingency, this dissertation sets out to explore resistance continuity. The empirical case is Movimento do Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST – commonly narrated as one of the world’s most longstanding and successful social movements, continuously navigating Brazil’s uneven politico-economic topography. The research problem concerns how to understand resistance continuity, from the non-essentialist notion of political subject contingency.

My approach is to examine the animate story of Brazil’s Landless Movement. The MST historiography encompasses a prequel to that story. An empirical analysis of ethnographic sources and Jornal Sem Terra (MST’s internal newspaper) suggests that the scene of this prequel, alike the MST story, takes place at the social margins of the Brazilian nation-state project. Historiographical events and characters portray a specific historical context – five centuries of resistance – in which the MST story is situated. With the terminology of historian Reinhart Koselleck, MST’s historiography hereby produces a space of experience: specific understandings of the past that assign meaning to contemporary activities, fueling socio-political advocacies, then projected onto a collective horizon of expectation.

The contours of the MST story are not exclusively drawn by MST participants, but also, as implied by my meta-analysis of 275 MST-related scholarly texts, by academic storytelling. Ethnographic and meta-analytical inquiries thus verify the narrative’s stabilizing function for political subject formation. Yet the MST story is also notably flexible. A corpus analysis of Jornal Sem Terra reveals substantial narrative changes between 1981 and 2013. The antagonist of the MST story shifts from the traditional large landowner towards export-oriented agrifood corporations. This antagonist shift parallels an increased emphasis on the small-scale farmer, downplaying the original narrative protagonist: the landless rural worker. What remains constant is the narrative plot – agrarian social conflict – which then allows insertion of different characters into the storyline. Stability of the narrative plot enables flexibility of the story’s main characters.

Yet such narrative flexibility eventually reaches a point where it jeopardizes the narrative’s stability-producing function. This accentuates the activity aspect of political subject formation. My empirical analysis of 18 focus groups, 14 individual interviews, and ethnographic observations, demonstrates that the MST story is continuously enacted, through confrontative and constructive resistance activities, thus reviving the narrative plot of agrarian social conflict. Hence, the MST story is not only revisited by movement participants, reinforced through their personalized storytelling, revised for more precise applicability, but also revived when recurrently enacted. The making of resistance, through animate storytelling and narrative enactment, fosters continuity of a contingent political subject.

This paper discusses variegated scholarly approaches to what is here typified as a political economy of meat. Identified as a multifaceted, transdisciplinary and most dynamic field of research, inquiries into the political economy of meat imbricate key issues of social and economic development, across the human–animal divide. While some scholars interpret livestock production as “a pathway from poverty”, others observe deepened marginalization and exploitation. The argument raised in this paper is that concise engagement with multiple critical perspectives may facilitate further explorations into the social dynamics that characterize the political economy of meat.

The past decades’ substantial growth in globalized meat consumption continues to shape the international political economy of food and agriculture. This political economy of meat composes a site of contention; in Brazil, where livestock production is particularly thriving, large agri-food corporations are being challenged by alternative food networks. This article analyzes experiential and experimental accounts of such an actor—a collectivized pork cooperative tied to Brazil’s Landless Movement—which seeks to navigate the political economy of meat. The ethnographic case study documents these livestock farmers’ ambiguity towards complying with the capitalist commodification process, required by the intensifying meat market. Moreover, undertaking an intersectional approach, the article theorizes how animal-into-food commodification in turn depends on the speciesist logic, a normative human/non-human divide that endorses the meat commodity. Hence the article demonstrates how alternative food networks at once navigate confines of capitalist commodification and the speciesist logic that impels the political economy of meat.

Forests for Sale? A Study of Exploitation of Forest Estates in a Parish in Northern Swe-den, ca 1870–1906

The modernization of Swedish society during the late 1800s and early 1900s was closely connected to the exploitation of the country´s natural resources. An im-portant factor was the sawmill industry in the northern part of the country where increased production led to a great demand for the acquisition of agricultural and forest land. The majority of these estates were owned by freeholders. Towards the end of the 1800s many of them sold their land to various sawmill companies. This process laid the basis for an ideological social debate timed around 1900, in which the freeholders were seen to be threatened and abused by exploitative forces. This culminated in 1906 in a law that forbade companies from buying agricultural properties.

This article examines the development of the forestry market in a parish in northern Sweden during the period 1870 to 1906. The proportion of commercially-owned land during this period increased from 3 to 58 percent, especially after 1880. The study also shows that the competition for land acquisition was great. Many companies were potential buyers and this situation gradually inflated prices and made it difficult for sellers to assess the actual market value. In some cases the value of an estate rose by thousands of percent in a few decades.

In this article the image of the freeholders as passive victims of modernization is compared to examples of individual farmers who themselves acted strategically to make a profit in the forestry market. In particular a certain form of estate that the government intended for settlers, became a commodity through which speculating farmers and companies made substantial profits - while the government´s inten-tions about lasting cultivation were lost. All in all, it appears that this whole pro-cess was much more complex than the social debate indicated.

When thinking of Iceland, two specific types of ice come to mind: the ice that is formed on the many glaciers in the country, and the sea ice that is brought to the coasts by winds and ocean currents. Because of space constraints in this volume, the discussion here will focus entirely on the phenomenon of sea ice. This paper is not concerned with ice as a scientific phenomenon, but with the image of sea ice as presented in a variety of different narrative genres concerning Iceland. However, a few words of elucidation will set the stage for the discussion. Ice on the sea is formed in two main ways. Either by being broken off in the form of ice bergs from calving glaciers, or else it may form directly on the surface of the sea as frozen seawater. Most of the ice reaching Iceland is of the latter kind, and arrives by way of the East Greenland current. It is the northern, northwestern, and eastern coasts of Iceland which are most frequently affected, and, in the past, it occurred most often in the winter and spring seasons. It is an infrequent visitor in the present climate.

This presentation will focus on climate impacts of hay and grass harvesting in the Mývatn area in the northeastern highlands of Iceland. Mývatn means “Midge Lake” and refers to the flies or midges, of vital importance for the local ecosystem, providing food for fish and waterbirds. Until the early part of the twentieth century, the inhabitants of the area lived almost entirely on the proceeds of the land by farming, fishing for trout, and collecting the eggs of wild birds. With its North Atlantic location, marginal for agriculture, grass was the only viable crop in Iceland, and the economy focused primarily on animal husbandry until comparatively recent times. Thus, the success or failure of the all-important grass crop, coupled with winter rangeland grazing, was the one aspect of the economy on which all else rested. The successful harvesting of hay was thus the farmers’ most important annual task. If there was not enough hay in the winter to feed the livestock they could die, and this could lead to famine and death among the human population. This unfortunate train of events occurred many times in Iceland’s history, and not least in the Mývatn district.

The purpose of this chapter has been to study the Swedish copper commodity chain, emphasizing the export of copper and brass to France and the links between the Swedish copper trade and the French Atlantic trade system during the eighteenth century. Conditions during times of war are an important factor to explain the downturns in the Swedish copper trade. It is more difficult to explain how trade recovered and expanded in the periods between the wars. To influence copper production and exports, the Swedish state actively contributed in numerous ways. This survey shows how the state performed market investigations in France, how they helped French craftsmen to practice their industry in Sweden, and how they subsidized copper export for Swedish merchants. The data about the Swedish manufacture of copperproducts demonstrate that certain goods were intended for the slave trade and that some deliveries could be linked to several French merchants active in the French Atlantic trade system. An assumption based on the observations in this chapter is that Swedish actors were also investors in French slave and colonial trade expeditions. The business of supplying copper goods for barter on the African coast as well as for furnishing the sugar refineries in the Caribbean generated profits and promoted the industrial development in Sweden.

An earlier generation of Swedish industrial historians had difficulties in analysing the development of Swedish iron making during the first half of the nineteenth century in the absence of the adoption of any of the coal-using methods. This chapter aims to discuss how information on British developments reached Sweden. Britain was the most important market for Swedish iron in the eighteenth century, so the chapter concentrates on signals transmitted through the market, and how the loss of market share in Britain after 1800 was perceived. The chapter deals with the more delicate matter of information gathered by Swedish travellers to Britain. Gustaf Ekman wrote that the performance of British iron making should be seen as an index against which Swedish iron making could be compared, and during the first decades of the nineteenth century this comparison was not to the advantage of Swedish iron. 

In the wake of the Companies Act of 1895, which stipulated that limited companies should appoint an auditor, an auditing field gradually emerged in Sweden. Our historical review from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century reveals a reciprocal relationship between audit regulation and the development of the auditing profession. Laws and additional rules both codified auditing practice and paved the way for a strengthening of the profession’s position. The findings also show that critical events have triggered these developments. In 1932, a corporate financial scandal forced the profession to improve auditing methods and formulate ethical rules, and the law that followed was considered a significant indication of the importance of auditors in Sweden. The profession’s position was further strengthened in the 1970s when auditors’ associations became rule-making bodies, and the state decided upon additional assignments for auditors. To meet the 1983 prescription in the Companies Act that at least one auditor in a limited company should be authorized or approved, the number of authorized public accountants increased significantly. © The Author(s) 2012.