Programme meeting in Helsinki, August 31 – September 2, 2022

At the meeting about 20 researchers, both from the programme and invited guests participated and discussed new research.

The program in short:

August 31:

Two public lectures by Jenny Andersson and Niklas Olsen at Helsinki University. Read more here: https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/news/society-economy/public-lectures-neoliberalism-in-the-nordics.

September 1:

New project presentations:

Cecilie Bjerre and Klaus Petersen, Våres historie.

Johan Strang (together with Ilkka Kärrylä, Maiju Wuokko, Stefan Nygård, Sophy Bergenheim), Neoliberalisation of Nordic Democracy? 

Roundtable on Nordic capitalism: patterns of liberalization, financialization, longue durée with:

• Jari Eloranta, Helsinki University, “A Nordic Model? Long-run fiscal paths to toward welfare states”
• Lars Ahnland, Stockholm University, “Financialization in Nordic Capitalism”
• Sverre August Christensen, Norwegian Business School, “Digitalization, globalization and liberalization in Norway”.

Paper presentations by:

• Ilkka Kärrylä, “The Young Finns Party and the neoliberalisation of the Finnish welfare state since the 1980s”
• Niklas Olsen, “A Second-Hand Dealer in Prometheanism: Bjørn Lomborg and the Turn to Modelling and Technology as Responses to Climate Change”
• Maija Absetz, “The challenge of neoliberalism to labour movement – the role of unemployment in economic and political thinking of central organisations of finnish and Swedish trade unions”

September 2:

Paper presentations by:

• Chris Howell, ”Interrogating Nordic Neoliberalism: How Distinctive is Industrial Relations Liberalization in Nordic Countries?”
• Erik Bengtsson, “Long-run evolution of income inequality in the Nordic countries”
• David Larsson Heidenblad and Charlotte Nilsson, “Personal finance bloggers as popular educators: Performing, embodying, and circulating financial knowledge in the 21st century”

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Thematic seminar (online), June 14, 2022, at 3-5 pm

Organized by David Larsson Heidenblad on shareholder culture.

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Thematic seminar (online), May 10, 2022, at 3-5 pm

Organized by Jeppe Nevers & Julian Lamberty.

Alexander Nützenadel presents: ”Financial Intermediation in the Age of Neoliberalism: The Case of Deutsche Bank”.

Financialization is usually characterized as a central feature of the Neoliberal Age. Based on the case of the Deutsche Bank, this paper analyzes the role of banks and their impact on the evolution of global finance since the 1970s. It argues that international commercial banks radically changed their business model in order to maintain a leading role on financial markets. The paper also analyzes the increasing organizational risks that banks assumed in this process.

The webinar is organized by the programme together with the SDU Centre for Business History. Jeppe Nevers will be chair. 

Alexander Nützenadel is Professor of Economic and Social History at Humboldt University Berlin and the current Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. His main research interests lie in European Economic History in the twentieth century. He specialises in financial history, the history of economic expertise, and the political economy of fascism in comparative perspective.He is currently working on three projects: a book on the evolution of economic expectations since the nineteenth century (together with Jochen Streb), a study on banking regulation since the 1930s, and a comparative analysis of economic conflict and the rise of right-wing populism in Europe between the two World Wars. He also directs the Priority Program PP 1859 ‘Experiences and Expectations: Historical Foundations of Economic Behavior’ (funded by the German Research Foundation, in cooperation with Jochen Streb). 

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Thematic seminar (online), April 5, 2022, at 3-5 pm

Organized by Cecilie Bjerre & Klaus Petersen on the family.

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Programme meeting, Sigtuna, February 9-11, 2022

The programme participants as well as invited international guests participated in an exciting three day workshop at Sigtunastiftelsen in the town of Sigtuna in Sweden. The program included discussions on individual research papers as well as methodological discussions. Content of the programme can be found here.

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Thematic seminar (online) January 25, 2022, at 3-5 pm

Book launch and talk about Contesting Nordicnesss. From Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand with two of the editors Johan Strang and Jani Marjanen, with comments from Carl Marklund and Andreas Mørkved Hellenes.

The book is open access here: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110730104/html?lang=en.

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Research seminar (online) December 14, 2021

Associate Professor Anki Bergquist (Umeå University) and Professor Thomas David (Lausanne University) present their manuscript entitled:

The Invention of Sustainable Development: The International Chamber of Commerce and the rise of Neoliberalism in Global Environmental Governance

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Research seminar (online) November 26, 2021

With Bo Stråth
Emeritus professor, History Department and Robert Schuman Center, European University Institute, Florence, Finnish Academy Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History, Department of World Cultures and Center of Nordic Studies, University of Helsinki

Planetary perspectives. The Brandt Commission and the Multinationals

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Program meeting in Uppsala, 2-3 September, 2021

Papers and presentations by:

Jesper Vestermark Köber, ”Graenser för demokrati”

Charlotte Nilsson och David Larsson Heidenbladh, “Ungdomslivets finansialisering”

Jeppe Nevers and Julian Lamberty: “Business Interest Organizations in the Age of Neoliberalism”

Discussion on a forthcoming special issue on “Nordic libertarianism”

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March 2, 2021, 9am (Scandinavian time)

Jessica Whyte (Sydney, University of New South Wales) on Human Rights and Neoliberalism

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February 11, 13.15-15, 2021

Keynote speaker: Melinda Cooper, “The Blue-Collar Taxpayer – Trump and the Wages of White Men.”

Melinda Cooper is professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. She is the author of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (2017) and is currently completing a manuscript called Capital Gains and Public Liabilities: How Neoliberalism Remade Public Finance.

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February 11-12, 2021

Conference: Neoliberalism in the Nordics – gathering perspectives

In the last fifty years, the Nordics have seen a profound transformation of social model, culture, and capitalist economy. To a varying degree, welfare state cultures across the Nordics have embraced markets as primary or secondary agents. Consumer patterns, cultural engagements and images of self and others have also seen fundamental transformations in relation to new notions of speculation, entrepreneurship and choice. Social movements of old have metamorphosed into new forms of mobilization both for and against markets. In what way is the notion of neoliberalism relevant to describe this?

We invite papers on topics such as, and not limited to: business, business organisations, and the role of business networks, social democratic parties and trade unions, popular and expert culture, language, rhetoric and images of markets, right wing parties and neoliberal ideology, family policies, feminism and gender, immigration, and Nordic identity.

The conference is by invitation only and we aim for one consecutive strand of papers and collective discussion in a group of 25-30 people.

Keynote speaker: Melinda Cooper

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December 14, 2020, 15.15-17

Webinar with Amy C. Offer

Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Princeton University Press, 2019)

Amy C. Offner (assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania)) studies twentieth-century US history in global perspective, with special focus on Latin America. Her research and teaching address the history of capitalism and political economy, empire and foreign relations, and social and intellectual history.

Sorting Out the Mixed Economytakes readers through half a century of US and Colombian history, offering a transnational history of state formation and capitalist reconstruction since 1945. In the process, it shows the influence of Latin American developmentalism on the formation of the US welfare state and reveals the midcentury origins of practices that are regarded today as hallmarks of neoliberalism, including austere systems of social welfare provision, changing systems of state decentralization, and novel forms of for-profit and private delegation.

Sorting Out the Mixed Economywon the First Monograph Prize from the Economic History Society. It was also a finalist for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and received an honorable mention for the Stuart L. Bernath Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.  

The seminar is organised by the Neoliberalism in the Nordics research group and the Departments of the History of Ideas and Science, Uppsala University, the Economic History Department, Uppsala University, and the Center for Modern European studies, Copenhagen University.

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September 3, 2020, 15.15-17

Webinar with Francesco Boldizzoni

Francesco Boldizzoni, Foretelling the end of capitalism. Intellectual misadventures since Karl Marx. (Harvard University Press, 2020)

Francesco Boldizzoni is an economic and intellectual historian, Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. His 2011  book, The Poverty of Clio. Resurrecting Economic History, won much acclaim in both fields of economic and intellectual history. He is currently working on a project about the role of social democracy in capitalist society, The Decent Society. 

The seminar is organised by the Neoliberalism in the Nordics research group and the Departments of the History of Ideas and Science, Uppsala University, the Economic History Department, Uppsala University, and the Saxo Institute for Modern European studies, Copenhagen University.

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