http://www.lhs.se/~broady/sec/ske-5.html
Some of you may be interested in reading the full paper, located at the
URL listed above.
>
>
> The Honest and Diligent Worker
>
> Ronny Ambjvrnsson
>
>
>
> This is a full-text HTML-version of
> Ronny Ambjvrnsson, The Honest and Diligent Worker. Skeptronhdften
> (Skeptron Occasional papers) No. 5. HLS Fvrlag, Stockholm 1991. (21
> p.) ISSN 0284-0731.
>
> Published om the web with the permission of the author.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> Foreword
>
> by Donald Broady
>
>
>
> Ronny Ambjvrnsson, historian of ideas at the university of Umee, has
> coined the expression "den skvtsamme arbetaren" to cover a main
> ingredient in the ethos of the early Swedish labour and temperance
> movements.
>
> "Den skvtsamme arbetaren" depicted by Ambjvrnsson was the honest and
> diligent, well-behaved and industrious, tidy and orderly worker, a man
> who mastered the art of self-control, who eschewed futile idleness or
> alcohol and devoted himself to organizational and educative efforts
> that served to ameliorate the conditions for himself, his family, his
> class, and the whole society. In Ambjvrnsson's eyes it was less a
> factual life-style than an ideal embraced by labour and temperance
> movement activists, as well as a project aiming at the creation of
> citizens in a future democratic society.
>
> This, hitherto unpublished, English translation of Ambjvrnsson's
> seminal paper on the subject was produced in connection with the
> preparations for a seminar in Stockholm in May 21st, 1987. The seminar
> was sponsored by UHD (The National Board for the Universities) and
> HSFR (The Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences).
> Its main objective was to give the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,
> who paid his first visit to Sweden, an opportunity to discuss with
> invited scholars from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
>
> The ethos or ideal described by Ambjvrnsson seem to some extent to
> have been a Swedish or Scandinavian speciality, which is why a
> translation of his paper was prepared to the seminar. It might even be
> that these specific features of the early Swedish popular movements
> have some bearings for today's sociology of power. When comparing the
> recruitment of the Swedish power elites with, e.g., that in France,
> one of the most striking distinguishing traits is the significance of
> the trajectories through the popular movements, the labour unions, or
> the Social Democratic party. Therefore, it might be fruitful to study
> a specific kind of resources - a "species of capital", to use
> Bourdieu's terminology - accumulated by certain Swedish families,
> social groups and institutions, resources which give access to certain
> regions of the Swedish field of power and might be converted to other
> species of capital (economic, political, etc). Tentatively, we might
> label this kind of resources "organizational capital". A hypothesis
> worth further investigations is that the development so well analyzed
> by Ambjvrnsson, i.e. the genesis of the ethos of diligence in the
> popular movements of the early twentieth century, might be regarded as
> the "primitive accumulation" of today's organizational capital.
>
> The original swedish version of this paper, "Den skvtsamme arbetaren",
> was read at the colloquium "Komponenter i en nationell kultur - 'Den
> svenska modellens' kulturella ansikte" (Components of a national
> culture - the cultural physiognomy of 'the Swedish Model'), arranged
> at the university of Umee, Sweden, 14-16 January 1987, and sponsored
> by UHD and HSFR. A different English version of the paper was
> published in History of European Ideas, X, No. 1, 1989, pp. 59-67. A
> French version was published in Ethnologie frangaise, XXI, no 1, 1991,
> pp. 67-78. Cf. also the comprehensive discussion in R. Ambjvrnsson,
> Den skvtsamme arbetaren. Idier och ideal i ett norrldndskt
> segverkssamhdlle 1880-1930. Carlssons Bokfvrlag, Stockholm 1988.
>
> Donald Broady
>
>
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