Historisk Tidskrift. Utgiven av Svenska historiska föreningen
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Historisk tidskrift 130:2 • 2010

Innehåll (Contents) 2010:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Mobbningsfrågan i förändring. Efterkrigstidens synsätt på skolbarns kamratrelationer

Av Anna Larsson

 

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

The bullying question: changing perceptions of the social life of Swedish schoolchildren after 1945

Historical and sociological childhood studies show that the implications of childhood are historically and socially situated and need to be investigated empirically. In this field, many different aspects have been analysed but peer relations among school children have not received much attention. The present study discusses ideas about children’s social life in school in post-World War II Sweden through an analysis of the journal Barn [Children], which was regularly published 1947–19 9 8 by the Swedish parent-school organisation.

Before the late 19 6 0s, children’s social life in school was a peripheral issue in the journal. When problems in the relations between schoolchildren were observed, they were usually explained by the personality of the child or by deficient upbringing. There is evidence of an apparent value shift around 1970. From that time the social life of schoolchildren started to get much more attention and to be considered more important. New explanations were used, often linked to a critique of the social and physical environment. The shift is clearly related to the articulation of “bullying” or “harassment” [mobbning] among school children as a significant problem, something that rendered a lively, and still ongoing, debate.

The shift around 1970 is discussed in relation to theories of the construction of social problems, agenda-setting and moral or media panic. It is also related to wider societal changes. In education, new ideas concerning democracy and integration meant that the social interaction between children became more important. In the behavioural sciences social models of explanation had to a large extent replaced biological ones and social relations in the family, in school and in society were a growing area of interest. New, less idyllic and more realistic ways of understanding children and children’s lives emerged, and children’s voices were given more space. The new ways of understanding children’s social life in school are best understood in the light of these changes.

Keywords

Sweden, 20th century, history of education, children’s history, childhood studies, bullying, constructionism, agenda-setting, moral panic, social problems, Riksförbundet Hem och skola