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Based on digital readings of all records from the Swedish parliament 1867–2019, we examine how the concept 'propaganda' was used in the debates. To track the concept, we have extracted word window co-occurrences, bigrams, and keywords. Research on the history of propaganda in liberal democracies has emphasized that the meaning of the concept was open-ended before WWI. By 1945, it had been contaminated by authoritarian propaganda, and its negative connotations were cemented at least by the 1960s. Our analysis, however, shows that 'propaganda' was used mainly in a negative sense from 1867 to 2019. Nevertheless, it was also possible to use 'propaganda' in a positive and neutral sense between the 1910s and 1980s. We suggest that a period of de-ideologization in Sweden post-WWII made it possible to use 'propaganda' as long as the issues were seen as non-controversial. The radicalization in the late-1960s meant that authorities and previously non-controversial issues became contested. To suggest one-directional 'propaganda' in order to implement what politicians had decided was in people's best interest became difficult in this context. In this new communication setting, 'information' was a more flexible term in contexts where 'propaganda' had previously been used in a neutral or positive sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a conceptual history of identity in Swedish minority language policy, exploring how "develop[ing] a cultural identity" became integral to the minority language curriculum. Following the methodology of Wacquant (2022), which combines Bourdieu's sociology with the conceptual history of Koselleck, the study tracks identity through archived documents from the political, media and academic fields of the 1968–74 immigration inquiry in Sweden and subsequent actualisation of the so-called Home Language Reform in 1977. This reform continues to entitle children who are raised speaking a language other than Swedish to state-mandated tuition in this language via mother tongue instruction (MTI). As a space for non-hegemonic language practice, MTI struggles for political and societal legitimacy and existing research has yet to explore how identity is entangled in its (de)legitimation. Following debate in the 1960s about the unsuitability of "adjustment", the IC aimed to construct a new conceptual framework for migrant discourse. Analysis of bills, publications, minutes and media op-eds show that agents acted as brokers to jointly construct identity as a flexible framework to cover diverse needs within and across their respective fields. Within the media field, pundits argued either for the right of the individual to choose their level of engagement with established groups, or for the autonomy of migrant groups to establish their own schools and communities. Within the political field, inspiration came from the perceived successes of Canadian immigration reform, while key academics took interest in North American social psychology research. The focal point of this cross-field negotiation was a hybrid concept, a necessarily flexible frame of reference whose meaning differed slightly within each field. Given the lack of semantic precision of hybrid concepts, reflexive language science ought to consider and problematise their application in MTI research and in further academic enquiry. • This article explores how developing a cultural identity became integral to the Swedish minority language curriculum. • It follows the methodology of Wacquant which combines Bourdieu's sociology with the conceptual history of Koselleck. • Agents acted as brokers to jointly construct identity as a flexible framework within and across their respective fields. • Identity was imported into Swedish media and academic debate from North American immigration reform and social psychology. • Problematic hybrid concepts can be approached reflexively in the language sciences via socio-historical inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a point of departure in the concept of democracy, this article aims to show how Swedish Popular Adult Education influenced the content of the established school system in Sweden. The Popular Adult Education and established school systems are studied through their relation to democracy, based on curricula, as well as on visionary and political steering documents. In accordance with conceptual history, the study shows how Popular Adult Education and the established school, with their different spaces of experience and references to separate traditions, gradually became accommodated through a common horizon of expectations about the importance of democracy. When this coalescence appeared, an administrative shift could be identified and the Popular Adult Education Movement was partially disarmed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the concepts applied to drug use and drug users in Sweden during the years 1882-1982. As a theoretical point of departure, concepts are treated as political tools and conceptual descriptions as political work. From an analysis of 43 public reports, three distinct periods stand out. In the first period, 1882-1962, there was no specific political need for conceptual clarity. During the second period, 1964-1969, the political need for certain (medicalized) concepts is more evident. Drug users were understood as sick and as potential objects for compulsory treatment, ht the third period, during the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the process was reversed: specific concepts of sick drug users gave way to creating the political means for bringing alcohol and other drug users under joint treatment legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIMS The aim of this article is to investigate the use of a rather vague medical conceptual framework within the compulsory treatment of alcohol and drug users in Sweden during the 20th century. The focus lies on exploring how a phenomenon came to be described as pathological, what the causes are for certain actions being suddenly interpreted in medical terms, and what consequences that might lead to. DESIGN Supported by theoretical speculations on medicalization processes and conceptual history, two empirical cases (the compulsory care of alcohol abusers in the 1950s and the legislative process leading to psychiatric compulsory care of drug users in the late 1960s) are investigated. The first case draws mainly upon official reports and archive material from alcohol treatment institutions, whilst the second case is built from reading official reports and parliamentary material. The research task for the two empirical cases has not quite been the same: whereas the first case is illustrated by the discrepancies between the labelling of treatment activities and the treatment actually carried out. the second case rather draws upon the enlargement of the field of signification of the disease concept to cover most aspects of drug use. RESULTS A medicalization process on different Levels is traced both in the post-war compulsory treatment of alcohol abusers as well as the compulsory psychiatric care for drug abusers that was introduced from the Late 1960s onwards. CONCLUSION The investigated cases show how the medicalization processes benefited from conceptual vagueness, leading to a widening of the conceptual dimensions of both the treatment and disease concepts. In this, the medicalization of alcohol abuse in the 1950s and drug abuse in the 1960s made way for a paternalistic justification of compulsory care measures that might otherwise have become politically troublesome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]