Bauer's History

For the past months I have become increasingly interested in the connection between social movements and social media. Within the field of contentious politics and scholarship on new social movements there exists a common view where political movements are always involved in a struggle towards being represented according to their own needs in media. Already early in movement history tendencies can be found that political claimants made use of new technology to spread their messages, where perhaps the most clear example is the lutherans use of the new printing press during the early 16th century. This line then continues from abolitionist pamphlets, the early labour union press towards the more fanzine influenced papers of the 1980's and 1990's.  However, the launch of the internet led to a virtual explosion of counter culture knowledge circulations, with early forums in the 1990's serving as a first example of early digital mobilization. However the largest breakthrough for...

History is always the result of the choices we make. More correctly on history-writing: history is always the result of the choices historians makes somewhere down the road. A book on history is still just a book and as the process of writing it takes form; it is impossible to write a history every person can enjoy and feel like it can be part of their story. Perhaps that is also why general history oversights, such as a history of world societies, will always fall short. If we dig deep enough we can always find that case that does not fit into the larger picture. For the past year or so Swedish historians have been rather curious about a new project by Swedish public broadcasting company, SVT which have made a large oversight called Swedens history. The goal of the show has been to create a fact-based story of the country from the stone age until today. And in so many regards, they have been quite successful. For instance, they highlight the inter-cultural contacts between people livi...

 Several years ago I read Wimmer & Glick Schillers now classic article " Methodological Nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences ". Back then I concieved it as a tricky text and I am still not sure that I have fully comprehended their critique of general history writing. If I would dare to say anything it is that Wimmer & Glick Schiller proposes that historians for a long period of time have taken the national state as given actor and boundary for studies in history, thus creating a hegemony in social sciences and the humanities were it is hard to think outside the realm of national politics.   Wimmer & Glick Schillers argument can be critiqued for being overly simplistic, since there is a wide field of colonial history, oral history and similar topics that needs to take a different point of departure than the nation state. As an historian I however likes their notion of an overly focus on national politics and national ...

  I recently finished reading Jason Stanlyes much celebrated book " How Fascisms Works - The politics of us and them ". In contemporary debate this work has been described as one of the key works on understanding contemporary fascism movements as well their deep historical roots. Stanleys book contains describtion of how contemporary fascism is part of a continous struggle based on social darwinistic ideas, but one of the key parts of the part book were for me his discussion on the rural aspects of contemporary fascism. I grew up in the middle of south sweden in a muncipality were, in the 2022 election, the swedish right wing populists the Sweden democrats gained their own majority in the municipal council, something I for quite a while struggled with understanding. Most of my friends growing up were from the swedish working class and whilst xenophobia existed in school, it was not very clear that most of the municipals inhabitants would vote for a right wing party. In my opi...