Bauer's History

 T owards the end of his life archivist scholar Terry Cook published a paper called "We are what we keep; we keep what we are" which highlighted the problem of appraisal in archival society. Appraisal can be understood as the process in which archivists decides what is worth to keep, and what to discard. Therefore, appraisal is the issue of life and death of both records and which history we are making possible for future generations to write.  In Cooks article it is highlighted that appraisal is not a neutral process, but rather the result of the archivists own position in society. Despite the best of efforts by leading archival theorists such as Schellenberg, archivists can namely not to a objective valuation of records. Instead, they make assumptions about what will be relevant for the future and what might not. This is closely linked to Donna Haraways critique of situated knowledge, were the subject position of the individual researcher drives what questions they ask....

During the last twenty years there have been an ongoing debate in circles within the field of the history on psychiatry. This debate revolves around a common psychological state known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Proponents of the diagnosis puts forward that ptsd has been described by various historical actors, put that the diagnosis itself did not exist. Therefore, PTSD is seen as the best currently diagnosis on the corpus of knowledge avaible to us. Other scholars remain critical of the diagnosis and put forward that the diagnosis were created at special time and place, and thus is a political rather psychological state. In this regard scholars have showed that PTSD was established as a diagnosis in the years following the Vietnam-war, when there was a lack of support for veterans in the us due to the many war atrocities. The veteran movement therefore needed to reframe the issue and put forward that the soldiers themselves were victims, since their war-experience led t...

 Back when I grew up in rural Skåne, Sweden internet had yet to become part of everyday life. In this part of the country, my parents where among the first ones to get internet access and later on broad-band, which at the time was a revolutionary invention even though it first went through satellite-dishes and later on the common phone-net in the form of ADSL. Today this part of Sweden actually have fiber connection, but it is up to the property owner themselves to pay around 5000 euros to get plugged into the fiber-net. Therefore, there implicity exists a digital divide between those who can afford fast internet and does who can not. This much similar to when I grew up, where the kids turned up for school around six in the morning to utilize the computer lab that had broad-band but only consisted of eight computers divided between 90 kids.  In the ongoing discussion of digitization it is often seen as a democratic project, where internet access will increase citizenship parti...

F or the past month I have been teaching a course on antiquity, and one thing that strikes me the most is the question of gender orientations in different parts of the world during roughly the same era. In this post I therefore which to show to example of how two different cultures arranged gender and in the end show how these connects to gender theory at large as well as what these organisations may say about our own time. But first some remarks about gender in history writing in general can be in place.  When it comes to history, the subject is often the history of the elites which to a large degree can be connected to historians focus on texts. In a society where the division of labour makes it hard to achieve overall literacy, it is mainly two groups during the classical era that stands out as being able to write. The first is the social elites, whom needs to write to both conduct political work and their trades. A second, lesser known group, that was able to write was slaves. ...

 F irst a disclaimer is warranted: I strongly condemn any movements that try to deny genocides which for the past decades have been quite common in neo-nazi enviroment even though this view is undergoing a change. This change means that some leading nationalsocialist movements no longer denies the undeniable, but rather questions the results of research on for instance exact numbers. This is of course a change of tactics rather than beliefs, but is likewise also worth condemning. As an historian and a policy researcher I am however quite unsure of whetever actually criminalizing such expressions of beliefs (beacuse this is what it is) can actually be a good way forward. For the past years Sweden have discussed a legislation which primarily aims at stopping holocaust denial. As a result of EU-regulations this have actually happened and today a new law is taken into effect. This law states the following: Anyone who in a statement or other communication that is spread denies, excuses,...