Author Description

The notion of a "Swedish model" has to a great extent been about the way that Swedes have organised their industrial relations. When we attempt to understand these relations, we encounter the paradox that research about asystem, which has been described as rational, well-organised, co-operative, consensual, etc, is marked by deep academic conflict, contradictory results, large lacunae, unstable fact patterns and a lack of reliable secondary literature. This book addresses these failures of previous research with a collection of anthropological essays, which attempt to unpack the issues and improve our understanding of the Swedish labour market model. The focus is on history, culture, continuity, modernity and liberal democracy. In this book, you can follow what happened between workers and employers in Sweden, from the early conflicts in the 1860s an 1870s, over the breakthrough for collective agreements and the Great Lockout in the early 1900s, to the cow trade and the Saltjsöbaden Agreement in the 1930s and 1940s. Learn more about topics like limited suffrage, Danish influences, rural mill patriarchalism, Swedish Herr im Hause, guilds, free farmers, popular movement organisational culture, labour movement ideology, employer wage strategies, the role of cartels, the use of piece-work, indiscriminate lockouts, failed legislation, rural labour, crony capitalism and attempts to explain high levels of labour market organisation.