The earth’s carrying capacity, and when and whether it may be reached, have been major topics in post war discourses on development, economic growth and environmentalism. The debate was not a new one; Thomas Malthus’ 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population had argued that population growth would outstrip food production. Post war processes…

In June 2020, our new edited volume Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas, and Aspirations (Routledge) will be published. In the weeks to come, we will publish a series of samples from the book. This one is based on Ragni Svensson’s chapter. Due to reasons that were both political, cultural and dependent on processes on…

In June 2020, our new edited volume Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas, and Aspirations (Routledge) will be published. In the weeks to come, we will publish a series of samples from the book. This one is based on Anton Jansson’s chapter. The 1960s and 1970s are widely regarded as the heyday of secularisation theory….

Working with uncatalogued archival collections is hard and time-consuming to the point of despair. Occasionally, however, the historian finds rare empirical treasures – at least it can be treasures if scrutinized against the right analytical background. While researching the early Swedish history of credit cards, I encountered the documentation of a book project from the…

In June 2020, our new edited volume Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas, and Aspirations (Routledge) will be published. In the weeks to come, we will publish a series of samples from the book. This one is based on Björn Lundberg’s chapter. In 1958, Canadian-born American economist John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent…

In June 2020, our new edited volume Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas, and Aspirations (Routledge) will be published. This book is the outcome of a joint Scandinavian project. We have met for two productive workshops, one in Lund in June 2018 and one in Copenhagen in December 2018, both generously funded by…