Narrativa konstruktioner av klass: Sociala ordningar och positioneringar i läroverkets studentuppsatser under 1900-talets första tre decennier

Abstract

Narrative constructions of social class: Social orders and positions in student essays from the Swedish Grammar School during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The article studies class formation in Swedish Grammar School, and how the parallel school system contributed to the forming of social classes. The source material consists of student essays dealing with industrialism, the rise of the working class, the labour movement, and the future lives of students from their own perspective. The research questions focus on the how the social structures were described in these essays and in what way various discourses from school textbooks influenced the student essays. The study is based on Althusser’s concept “interpellation”, which is a point of departure in our understanding of the essays as an act in which students negotiate narratives of the textbooks and position themselves within the society. In this discursive act, the working class was constructed as the Other, mainly carrying pejorative characteristics. Furthermore, the student essays paint a picture of the educated upper class, i.e. the social group of students, having the task of morally educating the lower classes. Thus, the student essays bear witness to how young men of the privileged class, positioned themselves in the social topography of their time.