Historisk tidskrift 126:3 • 2007
Innehåll (Contents) 2007:1
Uppsatser (Articles)
Association i bondesamhället. En mikrohistorisk studie av missionsintresset
i Tygelsjö, cirka 1835–1855
Erik Sidenvall
Fulltext (pdf)
Summary
A bourgeois association in an agrarian community. A micro-study
of the missionary revival at Tygelsjö, c. 1835–55
In early-nineteenth-century Sweden the association emerged
as a new form of organization. As numerous scholars have pointed
out, these new bodies, which aimed at the reorganization of
society, appeared mostly within bourgeois circles. Only on
rare occasions did the rural population become directly involved
in the inner life of these bodies. Yet, there were exceptions
to this rule. Numerous members of the Swedish Missionary Society,
and later of the Lund Missionary Society, were recruited from
Tygelsjö, a rural parish in the southernmost part of Sweden.
This article is a micro study of the social position and gender
of the people who entered the missionary societies from this
small community.
Even though this article argues that the difference
between bourgeois and rural communities should not be exaggerated,
the people of Tygelsjö deviated from the national norm. First,
whereas associations tended to attract a significant degree
of female participants in bourgeois environments, the missionary
revival at Tygelsjö was exclusively a male affair. This difference
is explained by the rural idea of the household and by the
lack of female auxiliaries to the missionary societies. Secondly,
in an urban environment the associations were by and large
the concern of the prosperous. Surprisingly, it was not until
the latter half of the 1850s that the land-owning segment became
dominant among the Tygelsjö supporters of the missionary societies.
This pattern can be explained with reference to clerical participation
in, and support of, the missionary bodies. The active intervention
by the vicar actually appears to have contributed towards making
membership in these associations more widespread. When that
encouragement ceased in the early-1850s, the prosperous class
became dominant.
Keywords
Sweden, association, public arena, rural society, modernization,
gender, revivalism, clergy
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