Abstract for A Playful time:
The article is a philosophical and literary investigation of the relationship between children’s work, subjectivity and play situatedwithin the history of textile work as recorded in the textile archives. Child labor has been a widespread reality in the European textileindustry and was a major contributing factor in the industrialization of the 18th and 19th centuries. A signpost at Rydal’s Spinnery, a textile factory in Sweden, which urged the workers not to play orfight – “Don’t play, don’t fight – rule out play and fighting at work”– provides a starting point for analyzing children’s play in relation to subjectivity and work. The article use a literary formulation, and draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben as well as Eugen Fink’s theory of play to develop an understanding of children’s play, life, and working conditions in the textile industry.
Abstract for Weaving it togheter:
This volume presents novel research perspectives on the Swedish textile industry’s history, with a particular focus on its international connections. One of the book’s purposes is to cast new light on the transnational connectivity of the Swedish textile industry, particularly cotton textiles. Both cotton and textiles in general have played a key part in Swedish industrialisation according to both academic and popular historical narratives, yet the subject has been treated in national isolation despite the many ways the textile industry has been shaped by processes and circumstances that are international in scope.
In this book, we try to look beyond the national borders and get some glimpses of how the Swedish textile industry is interwoven with international networks for dissemination of technology, know-how, consumer products and raw material – especially for the cotton textile production.
Textile is a commodity which has been traded over long distances for centuries. However, the emergence of the industrial production of cotton represents something totally new. The global proliferation of affordable cotton was facilitated by an intricate network of international relations woven by the British Empire, which linked Swedish spinners and weavers, mill owners and consumers to an international system of chattel slavery and colonialism. In other words, the cotton textile industry linked Sweden to the world in brand-new ways.