Dragspelet var under 1900-talets mittersta tredjedel ett självklart inslag i svenskt folkligt musikliv; samtidigt befann sig dragspelsmusiken på nedersta plats i den genre- och instrumenthierarki som definierade såväl den seriösa musiken som det musikpedagogiska landskapet.

Under 1940-talet inträffade två händelser som till dels var betingade av denna situation, och som därutöver bidrog till att skärpa den till ett socialt och organisatoriskt konfliktområde. Den ena händelsen var tillkomsten av Hagström Musiks musikskolor. För ett produktionsföretag med tonvikt på dragspelsframställning framträdde det stora intresset för dragspel som en potentiell marknad, vilken begräsandes till sin fulla utsträckning genom frånvaron av utbildningsinstitutioner villiga att undervisa på dragspel. Hagströms Musikskola blev genom sin storskalighet och inriktning ett konkurrerande musikpedagogiskt alternativ, obundet av de genre- och instrumenthierarkier som dominerade övriga aktörer på det musikpedagogiska fältet.

Den andra händelsen var införandet av statsbidrag till studiecirklar. Detta följdes en stark expansion av antalet studiecirklar, parat med att en allt ökande andel av dessa cirklar inrättades som musik-, i synnerhet instrumentalcirklar. Bildningsförbundens musikverksamhet hade dittills varit präglade av en musiksyn som uteslöt schlager, dragspel och gitarr. Här betonades folkrörelsernas unisona sång, musikteori och klassisk musik. Men expansionen av antalet och andelen musikcirklar, i förening med intresset för dragspel och med förekomsten av ett musikpedagogiskt alternativ som inte skyggade för det instrumentet, bidrog s.a.s. med hotet om en perforering av bildningsrörelsens rågång mellan dansbana och konsertsal.

Detta papper vill bidra med en sociologisk analys av de spänningsfält som uppstod när frågan om god smak dels flyttade in på insidan av bildningsrörelsen, dels blev föremål för skarpa beslut om medelfördelning som berörde såväl staten som det enskilda bildningsförbundet och förhållandet mellan bildningsförbunden.

Importance as impetus or impediment? The case of 19th century chartered surveyors.

Definitions and theories professions and professionalization have long been tailored on a set of professions established in England during the 19^th century. Chartered surveyors belong in that group, but have not received the attention afforded to other members of the core set – notably medicine, law, theology, and engineering. This paper argues, however, that chartered surveyors present an interesting deviant case in the history of professionalization, on account of their peculiar links to state and market. The argument proceeds in two steps. In a first section, we show how chartered surveyors have entered the profession literature, and how their early emergence is explained in these accounts. Next we focus on a hitherto neglected aspect of that emergence: the peculiar importance of a subset of those tasks that were within chartered surveyors’ jurisdictional turf. We show that chartered surveyors were endowed with the task of determining house values, and how this linked the professional group to the state both (a) via taxation and the control of the local government tax-base and (b) via the electoral system in the period from 1867 to 1918.

Definitions and theories professions and professionalization have long been tailored on a set of professions established in England during the 19^th century. Chartered surveyors belong in that group, but have not received the attention afforded to other members of the core set. This paper, conceived as a contribution to a theory of the relation between state, knowledge and profession, draws on the historical case of 19^th century British surveyors. It analyses the interface between state and profession, in an age when it became increasingly important to “reconcile the principle that the domain of the political must be restricted, with the recognition of the vital political implications of formally private activities.” Surveyors were claimants to a configuration of tasks – centred on the nexus of land, law and money – which made them an important auxiliary to the state apparatus and its technologies. This paper traces, through comparison of British surveyors over time and through juxtaposition with Swedish surveyors, how these tasks, and a corresponding knowledge-base, were shaped by the inclusion of new subspecialties and a complex legal environment.

Mobbning som företeelse har en obestämd men med all sannolikhet mycket lång historia. Som begrepp har det däremot en betydligt kortare livstid, och under sitt livslopp har det genomgått viktiga betydelseskridningar. Det vi idag menar med mobbning är inte detsamma som avsågs med begreppet när det först blev en offentlig angelägenhet i slutet av 1960-talet. Den första delen av denna uppsats skildrar den meningsproduktion som, via interaktioner mellan vardagsspråk och vetenskap, har format och omformat mobbningsbegreppet. Historiken är ett preludium till ett teoretiskt bidrag, vars syfte är att ge en ny ingång till studiet av mobbning som företeelse. Mobbningsdiskursens historia har, direkt och indirekt, präglat forskningen på området – forskningens huvudfåra är kvantitativ och individualpsykologisk, med fokus på stabila personlighetskarakteristika hos offer och förövare. Men vid sidan av allfartsvägen har det också vuxit fram alternativ. Ett sådant är Björn Erikssons analyser av mobbning. Det teoretiska resonemang som utmejslas i denna uppsats tar sin utgångspunkt i de mekanismer som Eriksson identifierar. Interaktion och meningsproduktion återkommer här som huvudrollsinnehavare, men nu i en helt annan mening än den som avsågs i beskrivningen av mobbningsdiskursens historia. Nu gäller analysen social interaktion och meningsproduktion inom ramen för begynnande och fullt utvecklade mobbningsrelationer – två faktorer som fått underordnad betydelse i den dominerande forskningstraditionen på området. Arbetet med att vidareutveckla Erikssons teori tar som sin stödjepunkt en sekundäranalys av två hittills orelaterade forskningslitteraturer, barnetnografier och kvantitativa studier av öknamn. Resultatet är ett teoretiskt ramverk som bland annat förmår göra reda för relationen mellan individualiserande mobbning och kategoriellt bundna trakasseriformer som rasism och homofobi.

Concepts play a part in any scientific endeavour. They simultaneously serve as receptacles for previously attained knowledge, as vehicles of scientific and didactic communication, and as building blocks in the construction of new descriptive and explanatory schemes. In this sense, concepts are central to the cognitive organisation of scientific disciplines. But disciplines also differ from one another, and not just in terms of the stock of concepts deemed necessary for internal scientific communication but also, for example, in terms of the logic of conceptual change, the relative influx of connotations, and the degree of universal adherence to specific definitions.

One crucial characteristic of the social sciences is that they share part of their vocabulary with the lay people they study. In some cases, social scientific terminology has trickled into everyday speech; in other cases the social sciences have proceeded by refining and redefining locutions found in natural languages. The aim of this book is to study empirically, by means of a detailed case study, the mechanisms that shape concept formation in the social sciences. It focuses on the history of the concept of ‘mobbing’, with special reference to the interaction between science and lay conceptions. This condensed conceptual history shows that the public discourse, that was instrumental in the diffusion and entrenchment of the notion of mobbing in the early 1970s, significantly shaped the career, contents, and uses of the corresponding scientific concept.

If monopoly of recognized skill is anything to go by, then, prima facie,

musicians & music teachers are in a poor position to claim professional

status. But while laymen cannot be effectively excluded from music making

they can be barred from entering certain positions, occupations, &

organizations. Swedish music education is an example of a successful

monopolization, which later became precarious: the Swedish Royal Academy

of Music provided the only educational route to the title of director

musices, which in turn was a requisite for admission to a number of positions

and occupations. After WWII, a sharply increasing demand for music

education created a need for the mass production of music teachers, unsettling

the topology of tasks in the field. The aim of this paper is to examine

the historical case of Swedish music education, and to theoretically

explore the demands raised by a sudden rise in demand upon a precarious

monopoly of recognized skill.

The article addresses Max Weber’s relevance for modern social science. The first part is a quantitative assessment of Weber’s fate in mainstream sociology; the second part presents an argument that Weber’s work contains elements of combinatorial thinking which makes it suitable for analysis in terms of the methodological apparatus developed by Charles Ragin. On the one hand, it is shown that Ragin’s notation and concepts are useful in bringing out some important features in Weber’s methodology and substantive writings. On the other hand, it is suggested that Weber’s use of configurations extend into areas that have received little attention in mainstream sociology.

Metaphors are quintessentially novelty items, and as such do not age gracefully. Once productive tensions between vehicle and tenor sooner or later become stale from habituation; all natural languages contain entire petrified forests of once vivid metaphors and analogies which have receded into pseudo-literalness.  To this class belongs a concept that has long been at the core of the sociology of professions: the spatial analogy “social closure”, geschloßene Beziehungen in Max Weber’s original, has been exploited to highlight important features of inter-professional relations, upon which influential theories have been built. The success of these theoretical approaches has been accompanied by a reluctance to revisit the underlying analogy.

This essay argues the case for reconsidering the spatial analogy underlying the concept of social closure, and it does so along two lines. First, it is shown that only a portion of Weber’s elaboration of social closure was received in the sociology of professions, that attention to the original analogy is needed to rescue the remaining parts, and that these have potential value for profession research. Second, it embarks upon novel metaphorical work on the basis of Weber’s analogy, in order to capture the peculiar dynamics of professions that are defined by employment in a single institution or type of organization. Drawing on the analysis of Swedish university teachers, which approximate this pure type, we arrive at a more generally applicable model of this class of professions. 

Det svenska universitetssystemet har vuxit till att bli en omfattande och komplex institution. Expansionen har inte bara gällt antalet studenter, lärare och forskare utan också den administrativa ram de verkar inom och de personalkategorier som ingår däri. Men förhållandet mellan lärarkår och administratörer präglas inte sällan av misstro. I sin artikel vill Ola Agevall och Gunnar Olofsson tränga bortom parternas spontana föreställningsvärldar och se hur universitetsadministrationens sammansättning och omfång faktiskt förändrats under perioden 2001–2018. De pekar på hur tillväxten av administratörer i huvudsak håller jämna steg med tillväxten av lärare och forskare. Däremot har administratörsgruppen ändrat karaktär – vilket kommer till uttryck i vilka delar av den som ökat respektive minskat, liksom vad som hänt med gruppens utbildningsnivå och könsfördelning. Det nya mönster som etableras under perioden kan förstås som en omställning av den administrativa personalens uppgifter till att tjäna ledningarnas strävan att styra och kontrollera verksamhetens effektivitet och produktivitet. En utveckling som kan förklara ökade spänningar i förhållande till universitetslärarprofessionen. En annan möjlig implikation kan vara att det ur administratörskåren växer fram en ny profession.

Transformationen av en professions organisatoriska omgivning: universitetsadministrationens förändring efter 1990-talet.

 Det finns bland universitetslärare en utbredd föreställning om att administrationen och antalet administratörer har vuxit kraftigt i omfång. Men antalet administratörer vid universiteten har i själva verket hållit jämn takt med tillväxten av den akademiska lärarkåren. Det som däremot har hänt är en inre omstrukturering av kåren: utbildningsnivån har stigit, och vissa typer av tjänster har ökat kraftigt (ekonomer, controllers) medan andra har minskat. Speglar dessa förändringar en förskjutning av den administrativa personalens uppgifter, från att vara stöd och service till institutioner, lärare m.m., till att i högre utsträckning vara ett medel för ledningens ambition att styra och kontrollera verksamheten? 

Tillväxten av mer kvalificerad expertis inom universitetsadministrationen kan emellertid tolkas på flera sätt. Vi vill i denna text även pröva tesen att den kan förstås utifrån den ökande osäkerhet som universitets- och högskoleledningar möter, i form av många och skiftande krav från intressenter, samt den osäkerhet som New Public Managements olika styrinstrument ger upphov till.

Från början utbildade universiteten kyrkans prästerskap och från 1600-talet även statens ämbetsmän. Den högre utbildningens fält etablerades under 1800-talet. Då skapades en rad institut vars uppgift var att utbilda det framväxande industrisamhällets expertis i teknik, farmaci, ekonomi m.m. Institutens yrkesinriktade utbildningar byggde på den tidens vetenskaper. När instituten och universitet närmade sig varandra blev vetenskaplig forskning efter hand en ny tjänsteuppgift för universitetens professorer. Under 1900-talet blev utbildningen av välfärdsstatens professioner systemets nya och fjärde uppgift. Den högre utbildningens fält fick genom 1977 års högskolereform sin aktuella struktur, där vetenskaplig forskning är universitetens dominerande värde och utbildningen av professionerna deras centrala inslag, samtidigt som alla professionsutbildningar förankras vetenskapligt. I denna situation blir universitetetslärare och forskare alla andra professioners moder.

The Academic Profession in Swedish Higher Education: Continuity and Change inthe New Century

The purpose of this article is to describe the composition and internal stratificationof the university teaching staff at Swedish higher education institutions. We showthat four fault lines shape the higher education field in the 21st century. These are,firstly, the resource hierarchies both between old and new higher education institutionsand between the fields of science, and, secondly, the prestige hierarchybetween research and teaching staff categories and between the senior lecturers’conditions of existence in the center of the system and its periphery. We argue thatit is necessary to analyze how these stratification lines have come into place to understandhow they work and interact with each other, and how they have partially reinforcedeach other, but at the same time have left room for a transformation of theuniversity teachers’ conditions across the university system.

One standard assumption in the theory of professions involves the notion of a specific occupational group trying to and partly succeeding in controlling the supply of services in a specific segment of society. Each and every profession is then seen as implicitly or explicitly trying to avoid or control the competitive market model. This is the core of the neo-weberian cynical theory of professions, underscoring social closure and monopolies as prime vehicles of professionalization. Another theoretical strand argues the importance of expansion for the entrenchment and success of professions. This paper explores the relation between professional expansion and social closure, focussing on those mechanisms which are concomitant with expansion and arise as a reaction within the jurisdictional fields of rapidly expanding professions.

The early 1990s are marked by two types of important events on a global scale. First, these were years of economic recession, accompanied by rising unemployment, the widespread ascendance of new forms and techniques of governance, and politically enforced restrictions on public spending.  Second, the early 1990s made knowledge society a common trope, and the global university enrolment ratio rose steeply. The two changes are interlinked –expansion of higher education bolstered youth unemployment, a knowledge economy was held up as a model for western societies – and both impact the system of professions.

This paper examines how the combination of recession and university expansion was accommodated in one specific locale in the system of professions, the case of Swedish university teachers. The academic profession was subjected to the same changes in the forms and techniques of governance as other Swedish professions. But whereas most professions encountered novel forms of steering under conditions of scarcity, the higher education sector was reformed during a period of abundance. Two resource-shocks hit the system. One derived from an increased flow of research funding, the other from the rapidly increasing number of students. We argue that this mode of introduction (1) postponed the perception of adverse effects on the profession, (2) aligned with, accentuated and altered the structure of an internally differentiated but formally unified university system, (3) created specific groups of beneficiaries at different poles of the system – and that, thereby, (4) an incentive-based institutional framework was worked into the tissue of the professional body.

Students of the history of professions are likely to observe in their profession(s) of choice one or more major quantitative leaps when the number of practitioners set off in an exponential pattern. The growth of the welfare state after WWII, for instance, gave rise to such patterns both in the established professions and in the then burgeoning semi-professions. Growth rates with similar time-shapes occur in other historical contexts, driven by state commitment, market expansion, or other forces.

In this paper we explore the relation between professional expansion and social closure. We focus on those mechanisms which are concomitant with expansion and arise as a reaction within the jurisdictional fields of rapidly expanding professions. But expansion does not only strengthen the position of such professions – it also lead to changes in task structures, in aspirations for more highly valued tasks, and encourages new divisions of labour among occupational categories in the fields, including the new “kids on the block” .

We will analyse the effects of professional “take-offs” after WW2 as a key example, although the main focus of the paper is theoretical.

One of the most important routes to employment within the social welfare sector worldwide is higher education, which equips students not only with the knowledge for employment, but with the tools to use and build on this knowledge. During the last few decades there has been an academic drift in professional education, especially for many shorter professional programmes. Many of these shorter programmes have left the realm of vocational education to enter higher education. On the one hand, graduates are confronted by an increased demand for research and evidence-based knowledge, and on the other, they are criticised for lacking the knowledge and skills relevant for professional work.

From Vocational to Professional Education presents new research into programmes suggesting how best to prepare students for professional work and addresses the challenges facing the education of professionals for social welfare. The book identifies and clarifies key problems, as well as outlining the political and historical context in which they are embedded. Chapters discuss theoretical and analytical ways to address these challenges and suggest recommendations for the further development of education for professional practice.

Based on comprehensive longitudinal research data, the book will appeal to policy makers, leaders of higher education, and teachers and researchers involved in programmes qualifying students for professional work.

Ever since Andrew Abbott’s seminal work on the system of professions, research on the professions has acknowledged, in principle at least, the necessity to consider professions in their relation to other professions. The division of labour, jurisdictional conflicts and intra-organizational interactions between professions have received their due share of scholarly attention. But less effort has been spent on understanding other ways in which a profession can be shaped and conditioned by its relations to its professional surroundings.

In this paper, we examine how the reproduction and expansion of the Swedish corps of university teachers were conditioned by the manner in which universities were intertwined with the professional labour market which they increasingly supplied with PhDs. We argue that Swedish universities depended on these labour market niches to absorb an over-production of PhDs – thereby simultaneously establishing secure career paths extra muros and securing a pool of future would-be university professors. Equally important, the university and its teacher corps were shaped by these interconnections. First, individual career trajectories served as the warp that linked the university to neighboring organizations. Second, disciplines have their specific hinterlands of employing organizations, and the extent and type of external career paths differentiates the teacher corps with regard to its conditions of reproduction and expansion.

The changing structure of the Swedish university system has shaped its corps of university teachers. The analytical device used to demonstrate this connection is the changing social functions of Swedish universities which serve as the lens through which we understand this change. We argue for five successive and historically added layers of functions: the training of church officials, state functionaries, experts of the industrial society, the welfare professions, and, finally, the mass of employees of the “knowledge society.” Each new function is superimposed on the existing ones, adding to the complexity of tasks, areas of knowledge, and teacher categories in the universities. The position of the university as the arbiter of the highest form of knowledge, the internal differentiation of the field of higher education, and the growth and stratification of its teaching corps are three main building blocks for this history of the Swedish system of higher education.

The modern field of higher education, and within it the corps of university teachers, takes on a dual significance in the context of the broader professional landscape. On the one hand it constitutes a professional field in its own right. On the other hand, the university is the institution through which the other professions are reproduced. It is with this latter aspect in mind that Harold Perkin characterised the university teacher as a key profession (Perkin, 1969).

This paper sets out to map the relation between social function, institution, corps, and cognitive base in the Swedish system of higher education, from the beginnings in 1477 until the present day. We assume (a) that these aspects evolve in different tempi, and (b) that they coalesce into particular configurations. We argue that this framework allows us to address central issues regarding the historical trajectory of higher education inSweden. Through which mechanisms did a medieval institution, catering primarily to ecclesiastical needs, acquire a capacity to accommodate and become the custodian of scientific knowledge? How has the increasing differentiation of the cognitive base affected the composition of the corps? How have shifts in the composition of the corps affected the internal workings of the university? And what role does this play in the formation of university teaching as a key profession?

Från och med högskolereformen 1977 infogades ett antal akademiska yrkesutbildningari ett samlat universitets- och högskolesystem. Det gällde grund- och förskollärare, sjuksköterskor, kortare tekniska utbildningar m.fl. som tidigare funnits vid särskilda enheter. Därmed fixerades grunddragen i dagens universitets- och högskolesystem. Detta kapitel skildrar hur universitetslärarkårens expansion, sammansättning och inre skiktning formades på det professionella fält som etablerades inom detta sammanhållna och hierarkiskt ordnade universitetssystem.

I detta papper undersöker vi vilka konsekvenser de förändringar, som universitet- och högskolesystemet har genomgått under de senaste decennierna, har haft för universitetslärargruppen som kår. För det första har det efter 1977 års infogning av en lång rad nya enheter i högskolesystemet tillförts nya undervisningsenheter, nya studentgrupper och nya lärargrupper.  För det andra förändrades sättet att finansiera och styra universiteteten under 1990-talets första år, som till en början innebar en kraftigt ökad volym men som på sikt omstöptes i en allt striktare reglering. För det tredje ändrades mot 1990-talets slut karriärstrukturen: dels blev doktoranderna i allt högre utsträckning anställda vid universiteten (doktorandtjänster), dels öppnades möjligheten att inom sin tjänst befordras till professor.

Vad har det inneburit för universitetslärarkåren och dess inre skiktning att universitetssystemet på detta sätt utrustades med nya slags enheter, nya styr-och finansieringsregimer, och nya tjänstekategorier? Vilken typ av konflikter kan vi förvänta oss att detta mångskiftande skiktnings- och motsättningsmönster ger upphov till?