Bauer's History

Following the advances in post-modernism historians have become rather aware that they do not produce neutral knowledges, but rather that the questions they ask to some degree also mirrors the questions historians ask. A clear example of this is Donna Haraways critique of the idea of "neutral" social scientists, since this idea often have taken people in academia as point of depature, thereby creating an image of the the neutral research as a middle-class male in his midforties without thinking of the limitations such as person have on what becomes possible to ask.  Given my awarness that openAI is not fully transparent of its sources, and thus neither transparent in which taken for granted assumptions that shapes it's answer (an aspect that fails to meet the standard of Tracy's good qualitative research ), I became curious on what would happened if I started to make a conversation with it with my own area of expertis as a point depature. I therefore asked OpenAI the...

During the past two years there have been a virtual explosion on the talk of AI. As much often is the case the research community is divided into those who believe that this will transform our live (so called techno-optimists), and those who calls for a slower process (so called techno-pessimist). Growing up in the 1990's I can see where the techno-pessimist are coming from, since popular culture are filled with AI:s that have grown out of control. The very classic action movies in the terminator saga tells the story of a weaponised AI that turned against humanity, and thus nearly extinguished human life through nuclears arms. Similar notions are based on the contemporary "The creator" in which humanity fights against an AI accused of nuking los angeles, which in the tend shows the be the result (spoiler) of human error, rather than the AI:s own choices. The plot-twist of The Creator and Terminator saga illustrates an often forgetten point in the debate, namely the defint...

During the so called refugee crises (henceforth labelled the migrationpolitical crisis) a friend of mine posted on Facebook with regard to the death of Alan Kurdi. My friends post were not part of the public outcry, but instead my friend asked what would happened when all the cameras have been turned off. A couple of months later the Swedish government closed its border and the ongoing political crisis partly faded from public memory.  The events of 2015 have been the subject of numerous studies and will probably keep future historians quite occupied. A couple of years ago  an article  was published, written partly by Ruth Wodak who is one of contemporary scholarship s leading expert on migration. The thesis put forward that notion of the events as a crisis were the result of a politics of fear, were Muslims were deemed as a threat towards both domestic security and the access to welfare. By framing the events as threat media tapped into a common xenophobic view of immigr...

In 1970's Sweden a common joke went like this: why do the soviets always sleep in a bed made for three? Because Stalin is always with them. This joke can be seen as a construction of sexuality, were the normative way to have sex is a intercourse between two persons. For the past year I have thought alot about sexuality and none the least the construction of sexual deviance.  In history of sexuality Foucault develops a notion of sexuality as a social construct. Foucault does not deny that there exist a objective reality surrounding sex, but he however makes an important observation: the field known as sexuality is largely constructed by social norms. In this perspective people will always have intercourse, but sexuality only exists once it has been determined as a field. The creation of this field of sexuality is usually done to control people, were for instance the church during 16th century invoked harsh restrictions on sexuality. This was later underscored by the 19th century med...

 This is the second entry to my series of posts on social constructivism. An important criticizism that have been brought forward by both scholars and public intellectuals have been that social constructivism reduces the human experience. If there is no "objective" reality, then there are no ways to explain the root causes of suffering.  In a 2012 article by Tracey Loughrahn this criticism is partialy met. The article revolves around the social construction of a psychatric diagnosis - shell shock - which commonly labelled to soldiers in the first world war. The common denomenator for this diagnos was that the soldiers became passive in various ways, from withindrawing into a shell which the outside world had limited possibility to connect with to somatic syptoms such as loosing the ability to use ones legs. In her article, Loughrahn puts forward the notion that this was reported from all over Europe in the early stages of war became described as a psychatric illness. However...

 The philosopher Foucault puts forward the notion that sex and sexuality have had different understandings throughout history. When reading the history of sexuality, it therefore does not exist one history of sexuality, but a multitude of social discussions that are manifested in different ways. This is insight that have become important in my own project, since one of my main challenges is trying to remember that there such thing a villains within history but rather actors who tries to better society from their contemporary problems.  One such example was my understanding of the victorian age before entering the project. I saw this age as an Other time, where sexuality were merely oppressed as the result of religious and morale doctrines. A couple of months ago I did what I usually do when entering a new project, I simply take a stroll on the library and tries to find monographs that works in the projects favor apart from utilizing tools such as Google Scholar. Whilst on this...