Ägare och kapital : klass och genus hos kapitalägare i Sverige 1918-1939

Sammanfattning: "Owners and capital. Class and gender among capital owners in Sweden 1918-1939" The thesis examines practices of gender and class among capital owners in Sweden during the period 1918-1939, through the analysis of two of the most powerful families of the time: Broström and Wehtje. The theoretical frame is an attempt to develop an intersectional perspective through the combination of several theoretical perspectives: Eric Olin Wright's model of class analysis; Pierre Bourdieu´s concept of social and cultural capital, Raewyn Connell´s understanding of gender and hegemonic masculinity and Robert Miles analysis of racism through the term racialisation. The empirical material is a qualitative text analysis based on personal/private letters and business correspondence. Four relevant outcomes have been identified. The first one point to the difficulties in defining class on the basis of cultural criteria due to the variation in cultural practices among capital owners, which make the group appear as elusive and contradictory. Instead, the thesis argues for a distinction between class as position, which in line with Wright’s model is defined by the relation to the means of production, and class as a practice, which is examined on the basis of Bourdieu's metaphor of cultural and social capital. The second highlights variations in the practices of masculinity visible in the empirical material, variations that confirms Demetriakis Demetrious’ expansion of the concept of hegemonic masculinity toward the notion of a hegemonic block. The third illuminates the concept of moral economy as a means to analyse the contradictory norms that shaped and regulated the capital owner´s economic behaviour. The study also analyses the emotional regime expressed in the ways through which the capital owners studied relate to key topics as technology and management, and emphasises how norms and emotions influence economic decisions. Finally, some women within these families had, despite their subordinated position, an arena for agency and relative autonomy.