Det historiska fältet : Svensk historievetenskap från 1920-tal till 1957

Sammanfattning: The present dissertation deals with the way in which social networks were used in order to affect Swedish Historical Science during a period of time stretching from the nffom’s to the nffrm’s. The applied perspective is inspired partly by the field analyses of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and partly by the latest research concerning qualitative social networks. The factors stressed as the driving forces of social networks are trust, gifts and similar sets of values among the participants. The source material which has been used consists chiefly of letters written among professors and professorship candidates.From the network and field perspective which has been constructed for this dissertation, the actors’ driving forces have been presented. It is clear beyond any doubt that social networks existing during the studied period had a very prominent position in the history discipline in Sweden. Treating the activities of Swedish history professors as operations in a field in the sense used by Bourdieu has proven fruitful. Bourdieu’s idea that a tension must be prevalent between different participants’ perspectives on an activity for a field to exist, has been fundamental for the construction of the historical field.Bourdieu has chiefly studied more formal phenomena, for example different teaching institutions or various forms of art production. This study, however, focuses on tensions that had arisen due to personal relationships, whose origin in turn varies from one case to the other. The difference in the types of studies is first and foremost a matter of method and material. My study has, however, proved to be fruitful in such a way that the ability for Bourdieu’s field theory and network theory to work well together, and their capability to gain interesting results from empirism, are clearly shown.