[{"_id":"project:2059","_type":"project","abstract":{"en":"This proposal concerns a study on the concept of solidarity in general and international solidarity in particular and the shifting meanings given to it in Swedish and German Social Democracy between 1968-2019. Through a comparison of the role and changing meanings of the concept for Swedish and German social-democracy I aim to study struggle over the concept in two political parties, that had different positions during the time period. While Swedish social-democracy held government power for an exceptional amount of time, German social-democracy was mostly in opposition. A comparison of two parties, to a great degree ideologically and institutionally intertwined, could shed light on parallel conceptual shifts in relation to political influence. Hence this study is relevant to conceptual history as well as to labour history. Furthermore, I would also like to contribute to an underdeveloped field within conceptual history, as the focus primarily is placed on the linguistic level of the press, where conceptual history usually places only secondary interest. By anchoring conceptual analysis in a study of how the rise of solidarity movements influenced the conceptual practice of social democracy I hope to broaden the perspective of an oftentimes nation-centred labour history, to include an international and transnational view focusing on a part of the Baltic Sea region. My source material will primarily consist of newspapers and magazines. The press sources will be supplemented by party manifestoes and other programmatic and ideological texts. I will also study how the concept is used by social-democratic movements, such as womens- and youth organizations, Christian organizations and solidarity movements tied to the social democratic parties, so as to highlight the struggle for the concept. Preliminary conclusions include that since 2010, and especially since 2015, the concept of solidarity has regained some of its classbased connotations, in that certain more radical strands of social democracy have begun to use it to characterize their ideological core. Hence, the concept has been reconnected to some of its historical usages, for the purpose of formulating a politics for the future. Furthermore, it appears that the wider sense of the concept, in which it can refer to hospitality towards refugees, empathy with people suffering war or discrimination or climate crisis, is extremely volatile, its meaning shifting quickly, which makes it interesting to study how these shifts are reflected in social-democratic texts in which the concept appears. There has also probably occurred a change in the relation between solidarity’s subject and object since the seventies, as the concept has come closer to the Marxist definition, in which it is closely related to international fraternity, although not as heavily slanted toward class-based fraternity as in the Marxist definition."},"keywords":{"sv":"Östersjö- och Östeuropaforskning","en":"Baltic and East European studies"},"project_id":"31/2019_OSS","identifier_short":"31/2019","local_ids":{"sh":["4140-3.1.1-2019"]},"dates":{"start_date":"2020-01-01","end_date":"2022-12-31"},"organizations":[{"funding":[{"_id":7,"id":"802400-4155","sv":"Östersjöstiftelsen","en":"The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies"}]},{"coordinating":[{"_id":481,"id":"202100-4896","sv":"Södertörns högskola","en":"Södertörn University"}]}],"people":[{"project_leaders":[{"_id":"authority-person:71501","orcid":"0000-0001-5215-3015","name":"Jonsson, Karin","role":"principal_investigator","affiliation":[{"_id":11803,"sv":"Historia","en":"History","parent":[{"_id":11802,"sv":"Institutionen för historia och samtidsstudier","en":"School of Historical and Contemporary Studies","parent":[{"_id":481,"id":"202100-4896","sv":"Södertörns högskola","en":"Södertörn University"}]}]}]}]},{"other_personnel":[]}],"tags":[{"_id":11774,"id":"60101","sv":"Historia","en":"History"},{"_id":11755,"id":"506","sv":"Statsvetenskap","en":"Political Science"}],"titles":{"en":"Shifting Solidarities. A Comparative Study of the Conceptual History of International Solidarity in German and Swedish Social Democracy, 1968 to 2019"},"type_of_awards":{"sv":"Projektbidrag","en":"Project grant"},"publications":[{"id":"diva2:1854780","type":"chapter","issued":{"date-parts":[[2024]]},"title":"Solidarity in a new guise : The concept of solidarity in the Swedish social democratic party press 1980–1990","language":"eng","author":[{"family":"Jonsson","given":"Karin","ORCID":"0000-0001-5215-3015","localId":"shknjn11","affiliation":[{"id":"11803","name":"Södertörns högskola, Historia"}]}],"abstract":"Solidarity has a long history as one of the most central and elusive concepts in socialist language. This article aims to examine social democratic solidarity as a propagandistic and ideological concept in the 1980s, time of political rupture when solidarity was being reassessed and redefined. The concept is examined in the monthly magazines of the Swedish social democratic youth and women’s branch organisations Tvärdrag, Frihet and Morgonbris. The study shows that the place and function of the concept of solidarity is ambiguous. On the one hand, the concept emerges as ideologically central in that its meaning is subject to struggle. The ambivalent relationship of social democracy to neoliberal influences exemplifies this. Solidarity could be presented as the antithesis of neoliberalism, while in other texts and contexts the concept was almost depoliticised by placing it in the sphere of the private sphere or presented as the responsibility of the individual.","ISBN":"978-1-64889-851-8","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-53924","edition":"1","page":"43-62","container-title":"Mediated Ideologies : Nordic Views on the History of the Press and Media Cultures","keyword":"Solidarity; social democracy; conceptual history; press; neo liberalism","publisher-place":"Wilmington","publisher":"Vernon Press","note":"[ed] Jukka Kortti, Heidi Kurvinen","published":[{"raw":"2024-04-26T16:28:00.000+02:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2024-04-26T16:28:32.515+02:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2026-01-15T12:22:43.277+01:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-53924"},{"id":"diva2:1696420","type":"chapter","issued":{"date-parts":[[2022]]},"title":"Solidaritet","language":"swe","author":[{"family":"Jonsson","given":"Karin","ORCID":"0000-0001-5215-3015","localId":"shknjn11","affiliation":[{"id":"11803","name":"Södertörns högskola, Historia"}]}],"abstract":"Begreppshistoria är en etablerad metod i humanistisk forskning och ligger till grund för en rad monumentala arbeten utomlands, men har inte ägnats något betydande samlingsverk i Sverige – förrän nu. I Svenska begreppshistorier bidrar ett fyrtiotal idéhistoriker och andra humanister till en ökad förståelse av den historiska process där våra vardagliga och vetenskapliga begrepp tagit form. Tydligt blir att ord vars innebörder kan verka självskrivna i själva verket utgör historiska  spelfält för oväntade betydelseförändringar och överlagringar, som fortfarande gör sig påminda idag.Genom begrepp som antropocen, samtycke, kris, teknik, psykopati, miljö, revolution, mode och feminism skildras vår samtida kultur i en brokig mosaik.","ISBN":"9789189526983","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-49917","edition":"1","page":"629-650","container-title":"Svenska begreppshistorier : Från antropocen till åsiktskorridor","publisher-place":"Stockholm","publisher":"Fri Tanke","note":"[ed] Hansson, Jonas; Savin, Kristiina","published":[{"raw":"2022-09-16T13:16:00.000+02:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2022-09-16T13:16:56.116+02:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2025-10-07T17:47:17.191+02:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-49917"},{"id":"diva2:1693840","type":"article-journal","status":"Published","issued":{"date-parts":[[2022]]},"title":"Unifying Solidarity : The Concept of International Solidarity in Swedish Social Democracy 1972-1985","language":"eng","author":[{"family":"Jonsson","given":"Karin","ORCID":"0000-0001-5215-3015","localId":"shknjn11","affiliation":[{"id":"11803","name":"Södertörns högskola, Historia"}]}],"abstract":"This article studies the concept of solidarity and the definition of international solidarity in congress materials dated 1972-1985 from the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti, SAP) and its three branch organizations. On the one hand, it examines the different definitions and functions of the concept within the party at large, thereby adding to historical research on the recent history of Swedish social democracy. In source material published by youth, women's, and religious wings affiliated with the SAP, the struggle for the meaning of the concept should become apparent, because these organizations represent both the traditional and official concept of solidarity that had been dominant in social democratic rhetoric, as well as the new, challenging concept of solidarity associated with the emerging solidarity movements of the 1970s. On the other hand, the article has a conceptual historical and theoretical aim, intending to understand how solidarity functions as a political and ideological concept for Swedish social democrats during the studied period of time. The study shows that solidarity as an ideological concept had a unifying function for Swedish social democracy. In the concept of solidarity and in the definition of international solidarity, the relevance and topicality of social democratic politics could be emphasized. This was done temporally by giving the contemporary political relevance of solidarity a historical dimension by presenting solidarity in general and international solidarity in particular as a social democratic concept with roots in the early years of the movement. By accentuating the history of the concept, solidarity, despite its obvious contemporary political link, was presented as a timeless social democratic concept, as central in the early twentieth century as in the 1970s and in the future. Thus, in a conceptual struggle with contemporary movements for solidarity and in polemic with the bourgeoisie's attempts to relegate social democracy to the past, the relevance and topicality of social democratic politics was asserted through the concepts of solidarity and, in particular, the definition of international solidarity. ","DOI":"10.33134/rds.371","ScopusId":"2-s2.0-85136299019","NBN":"urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-49842","issue":"1","volume":"25","page":"27-48","container-title":"Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory","ISSN":"2308-0914","keyword":"Begriffsgeschifte; International solidarity; Social democracy; Solidarity; Sweden; Temporality","publisher":"Helsinki University Press","published":[{"raw":"2022-09-08T08:03:00.000+02:00"}],"created":[{"raw":"2022-09-08T08:03:44.499+02:00"}],"updated":[{"raw":"2025-10-07T17:48:03.914+02:00"}],"URL":"https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-49842"}],"links":[{"type":"pid","link":"https://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/api/project/swecris/project:2059"}]}]