Modernity, Rationality and Citizenship: Swedish Agrarian Organizations as Seen Through the Lens of the Agrarian Press, circa 1880-1917

By the end of the 19 and during the early 20 centuries, the majority of the Swedish population lived off the land. In 1870, 72 percent of the population were engaged in agriculture, and 82 percent of the population lived in the countryside. Of the farmers, the majority were smallholders, as 64 percent of all Swedish farms had between 2 and 20 hectares arable land. This structure did not change drastically between 1880 and 1917, although the number of middle-sized farms increased. This text attempts to explore how the agrarian sector has coped with modernization, rationalization, and citizenship. It is also an attempt to study the image of agricultural change and its relation to politics and social transformation. At the same time, the study offers an insight into the ideological and social processes in Swedish agriculture and society at the turn of the 20 century. In general, the history of the development of citizenship has focused on either the bourgeoisie or working-class groups. In many cases, the agrarian sphere has been neglected, although this included the vast majority of the population. Focus is on agrarian organizations and cooperative formation and its relations to modernity, rationality, masculinity, and citizenship. The sources have mainly been the national agrarian press. The press lends itself well as a mirror of the ideas in circulation in the stratified agrarian society. This study is also on how agrarian cooperatives were founded, either as elite projects (top-down) or emancipatory grassroots movements (bottom-up). The idea behind this question is the notion that the founding phases of organizations