Öster om Arlanda : En etnologisk studie av berättelser och föremål i en hemslöjdsinventering

Sammanfattning: This dissertation lies in the crossroads between the study of artifacts and the studyof verbalizations. Its purpose is to investigate how artifacts, retrieved for ahandicraft inventory, inspired their owners to narrate and interpret values, lifecontexts and moral problems connected with the social and historicaltransformation of the twentieth century. The informants illuminated questions ofidentity, morality, gender roles, class relations, sense of place, and historicalpreservation. The right to dignity permeated the informants' accounts of life anddeath, reproduction, caring, work, and history. At the root of their world view, layan unexpressed understanding of justice, that was a part of their attempts tomaintain human dignity. These attempts were carried out partly through a malecode which maintained individual rights and integrity, and partly through aphilosophy of female caring, based on responsibility for the needs of others.Previous class divisions were illuminated when informants contemplated objectsonce used in the preparation of food. In the linen cupboards, even in well-to-dohomes, sorrow, pain and anger lay hidden in the sheets as traces of life events.Competence in work was important to the informants. The good life was to be ableto work. The linkage of artifacts and narrative experiences show how feelingstranscend time. The stories can be interpreted as the narrators' paraphrases of lifein the temporal dimension of poetry and history.