Conference Call for Papers by Hanne Østhus
CfP_Winter School_Intermediaries and Intermediate Places in Global Labour - Past & Present, 2025
Candidates with PhD funding are expected to fund their trips. However, candidates without funding... more Candidates with PhD funding are expected to fund their trips. However, candidates without funding can apply in their application for support of their travel expenses.
Call for Sessions and Papers on Labour and Working Class Studies Fifteenth European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) Leiden, the Netherlands 26-29 March 2025, 2025
in Leiden (the Netherlands)-https://esshc.socialhistory.org/. The ESSHC brings together scholars ... more in Leiden (the Netherlands)-https://esshc.socialhistory.org/. The ESSHC brings together scholars interested in explaining historical phenomena using the methods of the social sciences. The conference is characterised by a lively exchange in many small groups rather than by formal plenary sessions. It is organised into a large number of networks that cover specific fields of interest. The conference language is English.
CfP Historicising Coercive Social Processes, 2022
You are invited to submit your paper to the conference "Historicising Coercive Social Processes",... more You are invited to submit your paper to the conference "Historicising Coercive Social Processes", the capstone event of COST action project WORCK (Worlds of Related Coercion in Work) funded by the Horizon Europe programme of the European Union. The conference will take place at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague on 5-7 September 2023. Concept Legal philosopher Alan Wertheimer wrote that "our understanding of coercion underlies… our view of various social practices". The opposite also holds true: Researching social relations in a given historical context is essential for understanding how coercion underpins the organisation of production, the administration of punishment, and interpersonal relations in conditions of power asymmetry. In turn, social practices can only be understood within processes such as valorisation, im/mobilisation, and punishment that converge to create the historical dimension within which we understand those practices.
Call for research papers A recent intervention from labour history has pointed out how "the persi... more Call for research papers A recent intervention from labour history has pointed out how "the persistence and transformation of coercion across world empires, gender regimes, and historical eras" run counter to the classic narratives of a development from unfree to free labour within the emergence of a modern or modernized world. Instead, the authors propose a radically different approach wherein research "links the stories of work and production with those of violence, expropriation, marginalization, and criminalization." 1 This special issue addresses this intervention from the particular approach of intersectionality, and aims to demonstrate how the intersectional approach offers unique insights into this topic. We will achieve this through explorations of how markers such as gender, age, legal status, class, race, religion or sexual orientation shape and are shaped by systems and practices of coercion, bondage and marginalization and systems and practices of labour and production. Feminist and gender studies scholars' exploration of how gendered relations and configurations of power shaped past and present societies is an important starting point when investigating bondage, coercion, marginalization and violence. Moreover, scholars within this field have re-evaluated the concept of work. The concept no longer excludes work that happened in the household or reproductive labour. Moreover, this re-evaluation undermined the binary between productive and unproductive work posited by economists since the eighteenth century, and it challenged divisions between public and private spheres, where what happened in private was seen as outside the realms of economy and therefore not considered work. Moreover, the gendered perspective has been crucial in disbanding the idea of an evolution from bonded to free wage labour beginning with the Industrial Revolution. This assessment has been reinforced by recent developments within global labour history, which have also demonstrated that there was and is no unambiguous shift from unfree to free labour that followed a scheme(s) of "modernization". Such research has emphasized how "free" and "unfree" forms of labour relations co-exist and even re-enforce each other. 2 Scholars within global labour history have sought to bring together various forms of bondage such as serfdom, slavery, convict labour and/or tributary labour, but also to underscore the importance of context and peculiarities of time and space. Research on bonded and coerced labour has therefore revealed and sought out connections and links between regions and areas and attempted to overcome Eurocentric ideas of labour. It has, however, rarely used insights from intersectionality or feminist studies in its analysis. 3 This Special Issue seeks to remedy this. It combines insights from global labour history with
A recent intervention from labour history has pointed out how "the persistence and transformation... more A recent intervention from labour history has pointed out how "the persistence and transformation of coercion across world empires, gender regimes, and historical eras" run counter to the classic narratives of a development from unfree to free labour within the emergence of a modern or modernized world. Instead, the authors propose a radically different approach wherein research "links the stories of work and production with those of violence, expropriation, marginalization, and criminalization." 1 This special issue addresses this intervention from the particular approach of intersectionality, and aims to demonstrate how the intersectional approach offers unique insights into this topic. We will achieve this through explorations of how markers such as gender, age, legal status, class, race, religion or sexual orientation shape and are shaped by systems and practices of coercion, bondage and marginalization and systems and practices of labour and production.
Papers by Hanne Østhus
The Servant, the Law and the State
5. The Servant, the Law and the State: Servant Law in Denmark– Norway, c.1600–1800
Boydell and Brewer eBooks, Dec 30, 2023
Arbeiderhistorie, Mar 23, 2018
The article examines the situation of slaves and former slaves who were brought, presumably by fo... more The article examines the situation of slaves and former slaves who were brought, presumably by force, from Africa, Asia and America to the European part of Denmark-Norway during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to work as domestic servants in households, often alongside local servants. Based on source material from servant reward societies, censuses, newspapers and court cases, it is argued that state and society utilised a number of strategies to classify and categorise slaves and former slaves. In censuses, ethnicity and skin colour were sometimes listed, but not always, and information on ethnicity in censuses was not actively sought until well into the nineteenth century. In court, the issue essentially revolved around whether the person was a slave or not, whether he was free or unfree, but it is also emphasised how this was not subject to statewide policy, but decided locally, with subsequent different results. Such examples and variation show how colonial realities and logic could affect the colonial power's categories and practices, by, for example, utilising a dichotomy between free and unfree labour that resembled what was used in colonies more than what was common in the colonial power.
The case of Adam Jacobsen. Enslavement in eighteenth-century Norway
Scandinavian Journal of History, Jul 11, 2023
Domestic Secrets: Women & Property in Sweden, 1600-1857
European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, Oct 1, 2011
Domestic Secrets is an innovative story of Swedish women's property rights both in t... more Domestic Secrets is an innovative story of Swedish women's property rights both in theory and practice. In her study, Maria Ågren describes the letter of the law, legal treaties and the ideas of legislators and lawmakers, but enters also the reality of ordinary women and men ...
Labour and coercion in the Nordic region in the early modern period: connections, ambiguities, practices
Scandinavian Journal of History, Jun 7, 2023
This introduction discusses the constitutive role played by various practices of coercion within ... more This introduction discusses the constitutive role played by various practices of coercion within a range of labour relations across the Nordic region in the early modern period. In recent years a growing body of international literature has worked to re-conceptualize histories of labour coercion. Current trends in global labour history have emphasized the interrelational nature of labour regimes, eschewing traditional boundaries of free and unfree labour, productive and unproductive labour, wage labour and unpaid labour, and focused rather on the entangled history of labour and coercion in its various guises. Based on a critical discussion of the teleological frameworks and essentialized analytical categories that have largely characterized the historiography of labour in many of the Nordic countries, we argue for shifting the focus of attention to study the actual practices of labour and coercion in order to establish a more inclusive, contextual and historicized historiography of Nordic labour.
museum and society, Jun 9, 2017
This article is a case study of a newly opened exhibition at one of the most significant lieux de... more This article is a case study of a newly opened exhibition at one of the most significant lieux de mémoire in Norway, the historic house museum Eidsvoll House. Eidsvoll House has, since 1814, played a key role in Norwegian stateand nation-building narratives and continues to do so today. The article explores the tenacity of national narratives by investigating the role museums play in contemporary nation-building processes. It particularly looks at attempts to integrate domestic servants into this dominant and controlling narrative, and investigates the complex relationship between social history, national narratives and museum communication strategies. It problematizes the exhibition strategy, popular at historic houses, of recreating the past at a specific juncture of time and argues that such an approach might help to reaffirm social hierarchies. On a more general level, the article aims to contribute to a productive exchange between academic and museum approaches to history.
Servants in the early-modern Nordic countries
Slaver og ikke-europeiske tjenestefolk i Danmark-Norge på 1700- og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2018
Artikkelen handler om personer som var kjøpt i Afrika, Asia eller Amerika og deretter brakt til d... more Artikkelen handler om personer som var kjøpt i Afrika, Asia eller Amerika og deretter brakt til den europeiske delen Danmark-Norge på 1700- og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet. Artikkelen tar ikke for seg alle slaver og tidligere slaver som bodde i den europeiske delen av Danmark-Norge, men dreier seg om dem som arbeidet som tjenestefolk i husholdet hos andre, ofte sammen med lokale tjenestefolk. I artikkelen undersøkes det særlig hvordan denne gruppen ble omtalt, klassifisert og kategorisert av og i den dansk-norske staten, særlig i folketellinger, men også i aviser og av domstolene. I retten dreide klassifiseringen rundt kategoriene fri og ufri, mens folketellingene ofte tok i bruk etniske benevnelser eller hudfarge. I avisene ble begge disse strategiene benyttet. Det var likevel langt fra noen systematisk praksis, et poeng som illustreres både av at det i folketellingene ikke fantes noen egen rubrikk for etnisitet, fødested eller nasjonalitet, og at det fantes slaver og tjenestefolk fra India, Afrika eller Amerika der hudfarge og etnisitet ikke ble nevnt. Denne varierte praksisen illustrerer hvordan den koloniale virkeligheten utfordret kolonimaktens byråkratiske og juridiske kategorier, og hvordan koloniens logikk kunne påvirke kolonimaktens praksis, for eksempel ved at skillet mellom fri og ufri arbeidskraft ble aktualisert på en måte som lignet mer på koloniens enn på kolonimaktens.
Contested authority : master and servant in Copenhagen and Christiania, 1750-1850
Defence date: 16 December 2013Examining Board: Professor Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, European Univer... more Defence date: 16 December 2013Examining Board: Professor Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, European University Institute, (Supervisor); Professor Hilde Sandvik, University of Oslo (External Supervisor); Professor Ida Bull, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Professor Luca Molà, European University Institute.This thesis investigates the relationship between masters and domestic servants in Copenhagen and Christiania between 1750 and 1850. Living and working together, their relationship was structured around a contract between two individuals and at the same time specific norms dictating the master's responsibility for his servant's moral and physical well-being. In turn, the servant was instructed to be deferential and respectful. I examine how the relationship between master and servant was legitimized, enforced and contested in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a time of economic, political and societal change. In the thesis, I argue that the master-servant relationship was transformed during the period 1750 to 1850. Hiring contracts became shorter, preoccupation with family life cast servants as outsiders and an increasing separation of work and home life relegated them to the realm of what came to be categorized as private, while they still continued to be contracted labour. At the same time, servants in Copenhagen and Christiania were waged workers throughout the period 1750 to 1850, and there seem to have been little indication that either masters, mistresses or the servants themselves viewed the servants as integrated members of the family. Yet, throughout the century between 1750 and 1850 there was a continued emphasis on the servant's subordination, and language that stressed their subjugated status in the household persisted in law, in civil lawsuits between masters and servants and in fiction and prose on domestic service throughout the period 1750 to 1850. But while the fact that servants were subordinate members of a household subject to the authority of the master as well as hired help often working on contracts of six months or less was not perceived as contradictory in 1750, it came to be so by 1850. By the late eighteenth century legal minds began to struggle with whether legislation on the master-servant relationship should be classified as a contractual law or family law. It became a problem of taxonomy; a problem that continued to manifest itself during the nineteenth century when work and family came to be perceived as increasingly separate
The case of Adam Jacobsen. Enslavement in eighteenth-century Norway
Scandinavian Journal of History
Labour and coercion in the Nordic region in the early modern period: connections, ambiguities, practices
Scandinavian Journal of History
This introduction discusses the constitutive role played by various practices of coercion within ... more This introduction discusses the constitutive role played by various practices of coercion within a range of labour relations across the Nordic region in the early modern period. In recent years a growing body of international literature has worked to re-conceptualize histories of labour coercion. Current trends in global labour history have emphasized the interrelational nature of labour regimes, eschewing traditional boundaries of free and unfree labour, productive and unproductive labour, wage labour and unpaid labour, and focused rather on the entangled history of labour and coercion in its various guises. Based on a critical discussion of the teleological frameworks and essentialized analytical categories that have largely characterized the historiography of labour in many of the Nordic countries, we argue for shifting the focus of attention to study the actual practices of labour and coercion in order to establish a more inclusive, contextual and historicized historiography of Nordic labour.
Longer, broader, deeper, and more personal – the renewal of labour history in the Nordic countries
Scandinavian Economic History Review
Longer, broader, deeper, and more personal – the renewal of labour history in the Nordic countries
Scandinavian Economic History Review
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Conference Call for Papers by Hanne Østhus
Papers by Hanne Østhus