The Sea of Identities: A Century of Baltic and East European Experiences with Nationality, Class, and Gender

Please note the following recently published book, available open access on the web, which touches a variety of labour issues:

 

Norbert Götz (ed.). The Sea of Identities: A Century of Baltic and East European Experiences with Nationality, Class, and Gender. Södertörn Academic Studies 60.

Huddinge: Södertörn University, 2014.

Available at: http://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:745806/FULLTEXT01.pdf

 

The essays in this collection present research on national, class, and gender identities in the Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe being conducted by researchers based at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, Stockholm. The majority of contributions discusses labour issues. The contributors focus on transnational flow as they explore Danish, Estonian, Finnish, German, Lithuanian, Moldovan, Polish, Russian, and Swedish instances, and the region at large. The studies examine fluid identities in a historical perspective and show how notions of identity have been naturalised in specific contexts.

 

This book is issued in conjunction with the fifteenth anniversary of the Swedish Institute of Contemporary History. By bringing to the public the most current findings in Baltic and East European studies and offering an overview of work done by the institute’s researchers, it hopes to demonstrate the fruitfulness of opening contemporary history to broader regional and transnational approaches.

 

Dr Norbert Götz is professor of history at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, Sweden.

 

 

1. Introduction: Collective Identities in Baltic and East Central Europe 11

 

Part 1: National Identities

 

2. Fluctuating Dynastic and National Affiliation: The Impact of War and Unrest on Bornholm, Aland, and Saaremaa 31

 

3. The Nordic Threat: Soviet Ethnic Cleansing on the Kola Peninsula 53

 

4. An Unimaginable Community: The SS Idea of a Greater Germanic Reich and the German Minority in Denmark 85

 

5. The Ambiguity of the West: Objectives of Polish Research Policy in the 1990s 109

 

Part 2: Labour Identities

 

6. Lost Worlds of Labour: Paul Olberg, the Jewish Labour Bund, and Menshevik Socialism 139

 

7. From Fordism to High-Tech Capitalism: A Political Economy of the Labour Movement in the Baltic Sea Region 173

 

8. Solidarity and Diplomacy: Sweden and the Democratisation of Poland, 1980–1989 193

 

Part 3: Gendered Identities

 

9. Gender Equality Policies: Swedish and Lithuanian Experiences of Nordic Ideas 225

 

10. Group-Work on Gender Equality in Transnational Cooperation: Raising Feminist Consciousness or Diminishing Social Risks? 247

 

11. Young Moldovan Women at the Crossroads: Between Patriarchy and Transnational Labour Markets 269

 

Part 4: Environmental Awareness

 

12. Waves of Laws and Institutions: The Emergence of National Awareness of Water Pollution and Protection in the Baltic Sea Region over the Twentieth Century 293