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This book aims to investigate the taking and giving of hostages in peace processes during the Viking Age and early Middle Ages in Scandinavia and adjacent areas. Scandinavia has been absent in previous research about hostages from the perspectives of legal and social history, which has mostly focused on Antiquity (the Roman Empire), Continental Germanic cultures, such as the Merovingian realm, and Anglo-Saxon England.
The examples presented are from confrontations between Scandinavians and other peoples in which the hostage giving and taking was displayed as a ritual act and thus became symbolically important. Hostages were a vital part of the peace processes and used as resources by both sides in the ‘areas of communication’ within the ‘areas of confrontation’. Literary texts as well as runic inscriptions, picture stones, place names, and personal names are used as source material.
‘It is a work of very high academic quality. It is based upon meticulous and thorough studies of a great variety of sources. The author has definitely a very good knowledge of the source material. It is a very good study of a previously neglected research field.’ — Thomas Lindkvist, Professor emeritus, University of Gothenburg
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The authors of the present volume, Myth, Materiality, and Lived Religion, focus on the material dimension of Old Norse mythology and the role played by myths in everyday life. More broadly expressed, the collection looks at the social, ceremonial and material contexts of myths. This topic has been underexplored in previous research on Old Norse myths, despite its important theoretical implications. However, discussions around materiality, in a more general sense, have for a long time been significant for historians of religion, especially archaeologists. Myth, Materiality, and Lived Religion seeks to make the case for the relevance of materiality to literary historians and philologists as well.
Questions relating to the theme of materiality and lived religion are posed in this book, including:
• What do myths tell us about the material culture of the periods in which they were narrated?
• What role did myths or mythical beings play in connection to, for instance, illnesses and remedies during the Viking Period and the Middle Ages?
• How did ordinary people experience participation in a more formal sacrificial feast led by ritual specialists?
The editors of this book are all associated with the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Genders Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden.
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Den här boken tar upp två forskningsfält och kopplar ihop dem: kontrastiva studier och tredjespråksinlärning. Fokus i boken ligger på beskrivningen av ett antal språkstrukturer i nederländska och svenska som inte har behandlats kontrastivt tidigare: rumsliga uttryck för befintlighet och riktning, kopulaverb och deras kategorisering, opersonlig passiv och opersonliga konstruktioner samt positionsverben stå, sitta, ligga och motsvarande verb på nederländska.
Hur kan man föra samman klassisk kontrastiv analys och tredjespråks-inlärning? De två närbesläktade språken nederländska och svenska är inga typiska skolspråk som man lär sig i unga år i grundskolan och på gymnasiet, utan inlärare kommer framför allt i kontakt med dem som tredje språk och i vuxen ålder. Det innebär att inlärarna redan har kunskap i tidigare inlärda språk och ofta har utvecklat viss meta-lingvistisk och tvärspråklig medvetenhet. Vad innebär det? Det betyder att flerspråkiga språkbrukare i högre utsträckning än enspråkiga språkbrukare ”kan tala och resonera om språket själv, dess struktur och funktion” och även har ”specifik kunskap om hur två eller några språks strukturer förhåller sig till varandra” (s. 8). Vid inlärningen av ett tredje språk ska man alltså se tidigare inlärda språk som en resurs, speciellt de språk som är närbesläktade. Genom att studera språkliga strukturer kontrastivt kan man som inlärare fördjupa sin tvärspråkliga medvetenhet. Vilka språkliga strukturer i det tredje språk som jag lär mig liknar strukturer som finns i mitt första eller andra språk? Vilka språkliga strukturer i tredje språket liknar däremot inte strukturer i tidigare inlärda språk? Sådana strukturer kan kräva mer uppmärksamhet. Tvärspråklig medvetenhet är således en viktig inlärningsstrategi.
Annika Johansson är universitetslektor i nederländska vid Stockholms universitet. Hon forskar om kontrastiv semantik, tredjespråksinlär-ning och tvärspråklig medvetenhet som didaktiskt redskap. Hennes forskningsprojekt anknyter även till hennes undervisning i nederländsk språkfärdighet vid Stockholms universitet.
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This book deals with two research fields and brings them together: contrastive linguistics and third language acquisition. The book describes the following linguistic structures in Dutch and Swedish from a contrastive perspective: spatial adverbs, copula, impersonal passives, impersonal constructions and finally the posture verbs stand, zit and lie. Dutch and Swedish are usually acquired as a third language and not as a second language, which implies that learners already comprehend various other languages. When learning a language these multilingual learners have developed certain strategies which draw on their competence in earlier studied languages. In the process of learning a third language, metalinguistic and cross-linguistic awareness play an important role. Comparing linguistic structures in two closely related languages as Dutch and Swedish can enhance cross-linguistic awareness and therefore be used as a didactic tool.
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The authors of this edited volume focus on the emergence of populist discourses, coming from movements or parties from Romance-speaking countries in Europe and in Latin America. By combining linguistics, social and political sciences in a discourse analytical approach, the sixteen papers enlighten the mechanisms behind populist discourses yielding from different socio-cultural and political contexts. The common denominator of the studies is the focus on the discursive and rhetorical characteristics of recently emerged movements of populism in both continents. Investigating expressions of these political movements is highly relevant in today’s society, where the growing number of populist discourses has become a pre-eminent issue, alongside people’s increasing insecurity regarding future political and environmental challenges. The primary audience of this volume are researchers working in the fields of political discourse analysis; however, this book may benefit anybody with interest in language in politics.
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‘This volume will be a valuable contribution to the study of populist discourse at the political extremes. It hardly needs to be mentioned that this is one of the most topical issues in political discourse throughout the world today. The specifics of populist discourse are often misunderstood, so I have found this volume enlightening and helpful to increasing my own understanding.’ — Rodney Williamson, University of Ottawa
‘The anthology provides indeed a fine analysis of discourses connected to different socio-cultural and political contexts […] Since it brings together researchers specialized in media and political discourse analysis, it contributes to a large extent to promote a deeper understanding of current political discourses and extremist ideologies.’ — Ana Pano Alamán, University of Bologna
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Den här boken handlar om ett begrepp som förekommer överallt i olika sammanhang, men som också är ett av de vanligaste specialiserade begreppen inom humanistisk forskning: kontext.
Betydelsen och bruket av detta begrepp skiftar dock mellan olika vetenskaper – och ibland inom en och samma vetenskap – vilket gör en strikt teknisk definition omöjlig. Vad de olika bidragen i denna antologi försöker göra är istället att uppmärksamma och visa på hur begreppet kan användas i vetenskapliga tolkningar. I direkta tillämpningar av begreppet i konkreta tolkningar av bilder, byggnader och platser från olika historiska perioder, påvisar författarna hur olika kontexter påverkar tolkningarnas förmåga att skapa mening och kunskap. Den tolkande handlingen innebär alltså olika former av kontextualisering.
Boken riktar sig i första hand till studenter i konstvetenskap och andra ämnen där frågor om visualitet och visuella praktiker är centrala. Utgångspunkten är att boken inte bara ska ge en teoretisk förståelse av begreppet utan framförallt peka ut vägar och möjligheter till praktisk tillämpning.
Det här är andra volymen i Teoretiska tillämpningar i konstvetenskap, som ingår i serien Basic Readings in Culture and Aesthetics.
Redaktör för boken är Hans Hayden, professor i konstvetenskap på Institutionen för kultur och estetik vid Stockholms universitet.
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This book is about a concept which is constantly used in many different ways, but also one of the most common concepts in humanities: context. However, the significance and use of this concept shifts between disciplines, and sometimes within the same discipline.
All chapters in this edited volume address a concrete situation where this concept is used. The authors demonstrate how it can be applied in interpretations of images, buildings and places from different historical periods, and how it affects the ability to create meaning and knowledge. The interpretative action thus entails different forms of contextualisation.
The book is primarily addressed to students of art history and others who take an interest in questions of visuality and visual practices. Offering not only a theoretical understanding of the concept, it strives to point out ways and possibilities of the practical use of contextualisation.
This book constitutes the second volume of Theoretical Applications in Art History, which forms part of the series Basic Readings in Culture and Aesthetics.
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At the beginning of the 1960s, Swedish researchers started a sociological study of all children born in Stockholm in 1953, Project Metropolitan. This book describes the project’s at times dramatic history, where issues of personal integrity and the role of social sciences were heavily debated. These discussions were fueled by the rapid and far-reaching digitalization in society at large and also within social sciences. As such, Project Metropolitan came to symbolize the benefits and potential risks related to an expanding body of research based on large groups of individuals and multiple register data sources.
At the outset, the project’s founders sought to answer the following question: “Why do some get on better in life than others?” One of the main aims of the project was to study the long-term impact of conditions in childhood. The book therefore also includes an updated presentation of the main findings, as they have been conveyed in over 160 publications to date. These publications cover a wide array of topics and phenomena such as social mobility and education, substance abuse and crime, health and ill-health, peer influences and family relations, and adult lives of adopted children.
Today Project Metropolitan is known as the “Stockholm Birth Cohort Multigenerational Study (SBC Multigen)” and is still in full vigor. From its original group of 15,000 children, the study has become multi-generational by adding data about their parents, siblings, children, nieces and nephews. As they approach their late 60s, it will also be possible to follow these “children” into retirement and old-age.
In the concluding chapter the author discusses some of the challenges contemporary social research is facing. What are the current threats to academic freedom and what opportunities do the unique data registers in countries like Sweden provide?
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Christophe Premat est maître de conférences en études culturelles au département d´études romanes et classiques de l´Université de Stockholm, il est co-rédacteur en chef de la Revue Nordique des Études Francophones, franorfon.org.
L´ouvrage revient sur la génèse des institutions de la Francophonie au moment des indépendances des pays africains dans les années 1960. En s´appuyant sur une analyse géopolitique et sur les théories postcoloniales, l´auteur réévalue le positionnement de la France qui officiellement prend ses distances avec cette organisation multilatérale pour mieux la contrôler dans les années 1980 lorsque la Francophonie augmente sa capacité politique à intervenir sur les grandes questions internationales. En confrontant l´esprit des structures aux acteurs de la Francophonie, l´ouvrage évalue les défis et la difficulté à cerner les domaines d´action spécifiques de cette organisation. Plus fondamentalement, cet ouvrage propose une analyse critique du discours francophone construit autour d´une idéologie qui fait de la langue française un instrument pétri de valeurs et de normes.
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Christophe Premat is a senior lecturer in cultural studies in the Department of Romance Studies and Classics at Stockholm University and Co-Editor-In-Chief for the Nordic Journal of Francophone Studies, https://franorfon.org.
The book studies the genesis of the institutions of the Francophonie at the time of independence of African countries in the sixties. Based on geopolitical analysis and postcolonial theories, the author reassesses the position of France which officially distanced itself from this multilateral organization. France controlled more and more the organization in the 1980s when the organization increased its political expression on international issues. By confronting the spirit of the structures with the actors of the Francophonie, the work reflects on the challenges and the difficulty to define the specific fields of action of this organization. Furthermore, the book proposes a critical analysis of the francophone discourse based on the ideology that makes the French language an instrument containing values and norms.
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Placing itself within the burgeoning field of world literary studies, the organising principle of this book is that of an open-ended dynamic, namely the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange.
As an adaptable comparative fulcrum for literary studies, the notion of the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange accommodates also highly localised literatures. In this way, it redresses what has repeatedly been identified as a weakness of the world literature paradigm, namely the one-sided focus on literature that accumulates global prestige or makes it on the Euro-American book market.
How has the vernacular been defined historically? How is it inflected by gender? How are the poles of the vernacular and the cosmopolitan distributed spatially or stylistically in literary narratives? How are cosmopolitan domains of literature incorporated in local literary communities? What are the effects of translation on the encoding of vernacular and cosmopolitan values?
Ranging across a dozen languages and literature from five continents, these are some of the questions that the contributions attempt to address.
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The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection gathers fourteen individual case studies where intermedial issues—issues concerning that which takes place in between media—are explored in relation to a range of different cultural objects and contexts, different methodological approaches, and different disciplinary perspectives. The cases investigate the intermediality of such manifold objects and phenomena as contemporary installation art, twentieth-century geography books, renaissance sculpture, media theory, and public architecture of the 1970s. They also bring together scholars from the disciplines of art history, comparative literature, theatre studies, musicology, and the history of ideas.
Starting out from an inclusive understanding of intermediality as “relations between media conventionally perceived as different,” each author specifies and investigates “intermediality” in their own particular case; that is, each examines how it is inflected by particular objects, methods, and research questions. “Intermediality” thus serves both as a concept employed to cover an inclusive range of cultural objects, cultural contexts, methodological approaches, and so on, and as a concept to be modelled out by the particular cases it is brought to bear on. Rather than merely applying a predefined concept, the objectives are experimental. The authors explore the concept of intermediality as a malleable tool of research.
This volume further makes a point of transgressing the divide between media history and semiotically and/or aesthetically oriented intermedial studies. The former concerns the specificity of media technologies and media interrelations in socially, politically, and epistemologically defined space and time, and the latter targets formal considerations of media objects and its various meaning-making elements. These two conventionally separated fields of research are integrated in order to produce a richer understanding of the analytical and historical, as well as the aesthetic and technological, conditions and possibilities of intermedial phenomena.
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Anarchism and religion have historically had an uneasy relationship. Indeed, representatives of both sides have regularly insisted on the fundamental incompatibility of anarchist and religious ideas and practices. Yet, ever since the emergence of anarchism as an intellectual and political movement, a considerable number of religious anarchists have insisted that their religious tradition necessarily implies an anarchist political stance.
Reflecting both a rise of interest in anarchist ideas and activism on the one hand, and the revival of religious ideas and movements in the political sphere on the other, this multi-volume collection examines congruities and contestations between the two from a diverse range of academic perspectives.
The second volume of Essays in Anarchism & Religion includes essays covering themes such as Yiddish radicalism, Byzantine theology, First Peter, William Blake, the role of violence in anarchism and in Christian anarchism, Spanish anarchist-themed film, and the Occult features of anarchism.
In a world where political ideas increasingly matter once more, and religion is an increasingly visible aspect of global political life, these essays offer scholarly analysis of overlooked activists, ideas and movements, and as such reveal the possibility of a powerful critique of contemporary global society.
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