Historisk tidskrift 123:2 • 2003
Innehåll (Contents) 2003:2
Uppsatser (Articles)
Marknad, bönder och kön. En fråga om likhet och skillnad
Maria Sjöberg
Fulltext (pdf)
Summary
The Market, Peasants and Gender. A Matter of Similarity and
Difference
Present trends in science – where interest in individuals as
historical actors has increased lately, just as small narratives
are competing with the large narratives of syntheses – seem to
indicate that syntheses are out of fashion. These trends could
partly be interpreted as reactions to a former hegemony of structural
perspectives in history, as a result of an impact of post-structuralism
in a broad sense. This sketch of history today has its origin
in a classical dichotomy in the social sciences: individual and
society or actor and structure.
In order to argue in favour of
a renaissance for syntheses in history, I will try to show how
to dissolve, from my point of view, the very inhibiting opposition
between individual and society in the historical sciences. In
order to succeed in this task, the article starts with a review
of the market as a historical phenomenon and as an illustration
of how a predominant structural perspective has been used to
explain historical change in both agrarian and gender history.
In both fields, the market happened to be treated as an overall
explanation. In both gender and agrarian history these interpretations
emerge from a conception of the market as similar over time.
The market has changed dramatically but mostly in quantitative
aspects. More or less, the market has been seen as the main sign
of historical change.
In these narratives the essence of the
market has been taken for granted. Contrary to this idea, I will
argue for a mixture of structuralism and poststructuralism, a
perspective, which has its starting point in the differences
over time and therefore emphasises the qualitative aspects of
historical change. In this perspective, where focus is on the
cultural conditions for e.g. the market, neither individuals
nor society could be neglected; both are interpreted as necessary
and dependent parts of the process. Furthermore, gender (among
other aspects) should be treated as a precondition for historical
change, even the change of the market. Finally, I try to illustrate
a way to look upon the change of the market from a gender perspective.
After all, market forces are not forces of nature. They belong
to the sphere of humanity, which, like everything else, is built
on and within gender relations.
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